


The Oh Tunnel

by SeahorseWithLaptop



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Cute, F/F, F/M, High School, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 07:18:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8047435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeahorseWithLaptop/pseuds/SeahorseWithLaptop
Summary: People said that the senator's fuckboy son Luhan lost his virginity in the Tunnel, and that the Tunnel was where his sister Sehun smoked her first joint. Now they're about to graduate, and neither one sees the infatuation coming.





	The Oh Tunnel

People said that the senator's fuckboy son Luhan lost his virginity in the Tunnel, and that the Tunnel was where his sister Sehun smoked her first joint. Long ago, the founder of the esteemed Dorado Preparatory School was said to have christened the vast, hidden space beneath the school by holding a party so big it had caused the big crack running along the length of the tunnel, in which decades of letters of love were shoved and in various states of decay. 

Theoretically, none of the faculty knew about the Tunnel. There was an entrance for cars about five blocks away off a side street, concealed by a garage, and an entrance by foot in the boiler room in the form of a fake closet. But some of the faculty had graduated from the Dorado Prep, and though responsibility of the tunnel was a venerated position, stories popped up every once in a while about nosy maintenance guys or seductive young, cool teachers. 

Tao tipped her head all the way back, watching the smoke as it rose towards the ceiling but didn't quite make it, dissappating into the warm light. She stretched her limbs across the old armchair, slinging one stockinged knee across an armrest, remembering the last week of freshman year when she saw this place for the first time, when all the furniture had been pushed up against the walls so that when you smoked, the smoke curled up the sloped ceilings until it disappeared. Remembered how special she had felt to be allowed in the Tunnel. Over the summer, under Luhan's regime, all the furniture had been moved to the middle at one end so there was more space for kids to park their cars.

Not that she minded. Most kids still got dropped off at school, in limos or town cars, or by their stay-at-home moms with too-big, plastic-surgeried lips giving them big smacks on the cheek goodbye. But Tao liked driving to school: the time alone it gave her, the music as loud as she wanted it, surrounding her, sinking into her, relaxing her for the day. Her dad's old two-door bmw was parked in the back of the garage in a space which she'd fiercely defended since she got her driver's license early last year.

A rumble sounded from the far side of the Tunnel and Tao curled her body back up, taking another drag and watching out of the corner of her eye as a huge shining hummer rumbled down the center, car-width aisle and stopped right in front of the low string that represented the barrier between parking space and smoking space. Boys, lots of them, tumbled out, filling the tunnel with echoing, harsh sound, a jarring juxtaposition to the gentle, quiet smoke that curled from Tao and Yixing's cluster of well-worn armchairs and couches.

"Yixing! Hey bro, long time no see!" The boys parted for the brunette owner of the car, who was surveying the Tunnel with an assessing eye, looking for anything out of place. Tao scoffed.  _Long time no see_ ,  _my ass._ Luhan has just seen Yixing last week; Yixing had supplied the weed for his end-of-summer party. Yixing took a second to respond, setting down his blunt and straightening his posture.

Tao didn't miss the snickers of "t _his far gone and it's not even eight-thirty in the morning."_ and " _what a fucking pothead,"_ that rustled around the group, or the way Luhan's crew casually scraped their eyes across her loosely tied tie, half-buttoned dress shirt, and skirt. She stared them each down in turn, waiting until they broke eye contact, not even bothering to stop smoking while she did it. Even twirled an idle finger through a piece of her long gold hair. She was a senior this year, and she had promised Yixing she wouldn't stress the small stuff.

Something caught her eye in the back of the group as Luhan leaned down to talk business with Yixing, who was, in fact, not far gone at all, and made a habit of staying just on the edge of sober during the day. Tao narrowed her eyes, unsure for a moment, but—yes, that was Luhan's sister with him. Usually Sehun arrived with her own entourage in one of her own cars, looking every bit the indifferent queen as Luhan seemed the king of this group. 

Sehun was quieter among the boys. She still had that challenging sparkle in her eye that she shared with her brother that dared anyone to so much as look at her, but she didn't seem as if she was putting on a show. Something about seeing Sehun chatting so candidly with one of Luhan's friends had Tao fascinated. She looked rather bored, her backpack hanging low over the curve of her ass and her coffee-brown hair hanging artfully, carefully forgotten around her shoulders. Even in the dim light of the Tunnel, her skin glowed tan like her brother's, proof of a summer well enjoyed.

Tao looked away when Sehun flicked her eyes up, but not fast enough.  _Great._ Tao could count on one hand the number of conversations she'd had with Sehun in the last three years, partly because of Luhan's fierce protectiveness of her. And Luhan... Tao let her eyes wander to him, and he smirked at her in passing before turning back to Yixing. Luhan had never really seen her as worthy enough. Tao was just the daughter of some computer geek who lived in California, who's mother never bothered to show up for PTA meetings. Tao was just the gay busybody with daddy issues who didn't participate in any school activities.

The other reason, in Tao's opinion, was more important. It was Sehun's friends. Tao had no idea how Sehun could stand them; she'd observed the girl cringe or hold back an eye roll on multiple occasions at things her own friends had said, but then smirk and bounce back with something twice as savage. It was riveting to behold, Sehun's tendency to become the center of attention; and Tao had always rued that she, too, was caught up in it all.

Luhan was done with Yixing and his five friends followed him up the steps behind Yixing's couch that led to the boiler room entrance, the loss of their fidgeting presence instantly making the space feel bigger. Tao watched the last one as he disappeared from her line of sight and then listened as she heard them going up the steps, watching in fascination as Sehun and Luhan shared an entire conversation with their eyes that ended with Sehun sitting down on a couch a few yards from Tao's chair, tucking her legs under her and pulling out her phone and earphones.

Tao watched in horror, suddenly remembering that Yixing was the one she'd told about her crush on the ever-popular queen bitch freshman year. That she was why Yixing had offered his services to Luhan in the first place, although he probably would have later on anyway. Thankfully, Yixing didn't seem to be paying much attention. He was tapping away at his phone, joint forgotten, eyebrows furrowed slightly in concentration. 

When she turned her attention back to Sehun, the girl was staring right at her, one earphone in her ear, one out, toying with the other earphone idly in one hand. "So I mean, what the hell do you even do outside of school anyway? Are you with him all the time?" She asked directly. And now there was no avoiding it. This wasn't her asking for homework from a class, or the keys to a classroom, or who would present their slides about Democratic Theory first. So Tao prepared herself for the worst. 

"I'm actually trying to preserve my veil of mystery until graduation," she replied, thinking of Sehun's face if she ever saw her darkroom. It would probably resemble her face when Kim Jinki had thrown up on her Loubitons at semi last year.

Sehun scoffed. "It's not cool. Listen hon, mystery works for a few weeks at most. Then people just start assuming you're a total fucking loser."

"You're probably right," Tao said evenly, "But better than them assuming I'm a shallow bitchy prick, so."

Sehun threw her head back and giggled, her eyes crunching in a way that made her seem young and delighted. "Touché. Although you're probably so used to it by now that when you go to college, that is, if you're going to college, you might have trouble not being mysterious."

Tao shrugged. Part of her wanted to say,  _I'm starting to care less and less. I'm a senior and high school's barely going to matter to me in ten years._ But she didn't. Because this was Sehun, and if Tao said one thing sideways, it would be all over the school before the last period bell. Instead she said, "You just have to get to know me, I guess. Your brother seems to have everyone figured out, anyway."

"Well, I'm not my brother." Sehun huffed. "I have fucking art first period, can you believe the audacity of our counselors? I specifically told them to give me a study hall. Now I have to worry about getting literal shit all over my clothes at the risk of it having it stained like a badge of messiness for the rest of the day. Great way of setting an example for the kids." She meant the underclassmen.

"Do you like art?"

Sehun blinked at the question. "Do I look like a connoisseur of the arts to you?"

"I mean, you could go Machiavellian and say ruling the school is an art. You could say getting the freshies to quake in their boots is an art. Whatever floats your boat, dude." Tao offered Sehun a small, fake smile.

Something in Sehun was delighted by it. "Yeah, I guess so," she replied, her gaze sweeping over Tao like she'd never seen her before. Tao shifted in her seat, sitting up straighter, pulling her blouse straight so her stomach was covered and her cleavage was less indecent. She tried to steady her breathing; this girl could rip her to pieces and make her last year of high school, one that promised to be pleasant, like a gentle spring breeze, a living hell. "Well, I'm gonna show up to class, at least," Sehun declared eventually, untucking her legs and rising all in one sudden motion, flipping her hair off her shoulder. "Don't stay in the tunnel too long. It'll suck that natural melanin straight from your skin. But you didn't hear that from me." She winked and sashayed around Tao's chair. Tao listened quietly to the patter of her footsteps up the staircase built into the side of the bricked-in end of the tunnel and then the opening and closing of the door.

"That was surprisingly without explosion," Yixing deadpanned, looking up from his phone with a small huff of a laugh. Tao reached out a shoeless foot and shoved him in the shoulder, relief and something else putting a smile on her face. Something that made her want another conversation with Queen Bitch, maybe.

"I should go to class," She mumbled, grabbing her converses from where she'd kicked them off and buttoning up her shirt. "This place feels like an office."

Yixing just shrugged and stretched out on his stomach across his couch, tapping away. He had a guaranteed spot at his father's Fortune 500 company after he graduated high school, and he was getting enough practice doing what he was doing right now, so he didn't really have any need for school. He was perfectly polite about the reality of it, however. None of the teachers begrudged him of his reality—they were used to it.

* * *

Minseok knew they meant well, she really did. She knew that the way she looked and her tendency to say little rather than a lot made people feel comfortable around her, made them feel like she should be someone they kept at their center. She knew that it made her parents feel better to hear reports from her chauffeur that she was going out with lots of kids her own age who seemed perfectly responsible. She knew that the kids certainly hoped their names got passed on to the dean of the college most of them were gunning for—who also happened to be her father.

This was how it had always been. Always surrounded by people, all the time. Her mother, who was in lots of book clubs, told her that human interaction was the platform on which personality was built. She said human contact made a functioning member of society. She somehow missed the fact that Minseok didn't tend to actually  _say_ very much about any of it. 

A new school meant jockeying for position: teachers trying to figure out how hard she was going to try, kids trying to figure out how much they could bully her or how much she could bully them, girls fighting over who could walk with her in the halls. It was only the beginning of sophomore year, so nothing was quite set in stone. Minseok watched the seniors as they parted the kids in the hallways with a sullen jealousy: _they_ had nothing at all to worry about. They probably had a list of five people they spent all their time with. 

Through the small clump of girls around her, she was watching the students flowing through the halls of the basement floor, where she'd been assigned her locker. It was technically where the 9th grade lockers were, but everyone assured her her locker was in a super accessible place. Freshman populated the area, but then again, she mused, even though some of them probably  _looked_ older than she did. Suddenly, a rush of boys, seniors, appeared out of nowhere, and Minseok blanched. They'd come out of a  _closet._

She knew who Luhan was, of course. She saw him there, trailing them. The son of Senator Oh looked tanner than he had when she'd seen him briefly on her visit to the school last year and in pictures, and his hair was a darker shade of brown. He seemed bigger up close, too, like his muscles sent ripples of assumed self-posession off and away from him. 

"Where did they just..." she asked the girl on her right, clutching her books to her chest.

"Oh, they're coming from the Tunnel," the girl next to her said. "Luhan's in charge of it this year. It's invite-only. This old-ass tunnel runs under the school, and the seniors use it to hang out and throw parties. And park their cars. And do shady stuff. That's the foot entrance." She sounded kind of reverant.

"A tunnel?" Minseok repeated. Blinked. She realized that Luhan had stopped moving and was leaning gently against a locker, phone in hand like he was about to send a text message. But his eyes were locked with hers, and he was staring at her. Not in a particularly intense way, or a creepy way, just curious. Like her. Minseok wondered if he knew who she was.  _Probably not._ Still, it took her too long to tear her eyes away from his, which were ringed with surprisingly long, dark lashes, and hurry down the hall with her friends.

She was halfway to class when someone blocked her way, making her stop right in the middle of the hall and hold up everyone behind her. She got ready to apologize, but nobody complained, and some even moved a little to the side and just kept going, like a stream around rocks. She looked up at Luhan in surprise. "Didn't I just see you..." She murmured. How had he gotten to be coming the opposite way down the hall?

"I haven't seen you before," Luhan said by way of reply, shoving his hands into his pockets. The curious stare morphed into an intent, sparky one, sweeping up Minseok's new oxfords, small frame, and medium-long black hair. 

"I'm, um, I'm new," Minseok answered. "I just transferred from the Lion School for Girls. I—"

"Yeah, whatever." Luhan shoved his phone into Minseok's hand. "Put your name and number in there pretty please, young thing." 

Minseok stared at him, her heart leaping a little in her chest. His phone felt heavy in her hand and for a moment she worried that she'd drop it, or do something equally stupid, like give it back to him, or put her dead aunt's phone number in. But she licked her lips and did what he asked, brain a little too muddled to question it. 

"Uh—there ya go." She handed it back to him, hoping there wasn't too much grease from her hands on it or anything. He took it and she watched as he added something to her name, and she wasn't sure because she was reading upside down, but it looked like he typed _minxy fresh meat._  

When he was done, he looked up at her again, like was suprised she was still there. He bit his lip, letting his gaze sweep over her one more time. "That mouth," he murmured, then turned and moved back down the hallway, seeing someone he knew and calling to them loudly, shoving his phone in his pocket.

"I blew him after a soccer game once last year," a girl next to Minseok half-sighed. 

Minseok looked over at the junior in wide-eyed surprise.  _Yoonji?_ Minseok was still getting names.

"What?" Yoonji shrugged. "He has a pretty dick. I regret nothing." The girls around them tittered, but Minseok just stood there trying to digest everything. Her school last hear had been all girls, so while there had been plenty of dating, none of it had happened within the school walls, and none of it  _below_  them. 

Later that day, after a shopping trip with a junior who was the kid of some hedge fund manager and her friends, Minseok's phone pinged with a message.

[ _bro, when are we christening the dungeon dude]_

The number was unfamiliar to her. So was every number in the groupchat—no, wait. The girl she'd just gone shopping with, Hyerung, was in it.

[ _if you call it the dungeon one more time istg]_

_[sry, the Holy & Sacred Place Of Weed and Booze]_

Was she supposed to be in this groupchat? Had Hyerung added her on accident? Had—Luhan?

[ _probs first weekend of next month]_

That was a different number. Was that Luhan? She'd thought the  _if you call it the dungeon_ person was Luhan. Maybe it was Sehun, his twin sister. Minseok really wished she knew.

Like a prayer answered, another text came through her phone, this time from a single number. 

[ _hey sweet thing, add me on sc ;)_ ]

There was a picture of a snapcode, too. That  _had_ to be Luhan. The groupchat was still pinging, but Minseok didn't really understand most of it and it was peppered with inside jokes, so she turned off her notifications for it and filed it away as a relative honor that Luhan had added her, although she suspected he'd only done it because he wanted something from her. Still, she added him to her snapchat and watched as he played soccer on roller blades on his snapchat story. 

Now she knew that  _probs first weekend_ was Sehun, because it wasn't from Luhan's number. Luhan snapped her right away. He was shirtless on his couch, beads of water from a shower still clinging to his skin. Minseok was tempted to roll her eyes, but she didn't want to waste the seven seconds she had to stare at the picture.

She took a picture of herself biting her lip. She'd played this sort of game before, or at least knew vaguely how it went. He wouldn't screenshot unless it was a nude, or close enough to show his friends. He probably expected nothing at all from her. He probably expected a picture of a wall maximum.

The response was fast. He was biting his lips, too, but they were curled almost uncontrollably into a delighted smirk, and he'd typed the words [ _aw babe._ ]

"Minseok, honey! We're right here, I don't know why you have to be sitting on your phone all the time. Play cards with us! The cook's almost done with dinner, I'm sure you're starving." That was Minseok's mother's voice, soft and insistent. Minseok sighed and set her phone aside, not feeling like a fight today.

When she was finally in bed that night, able to check her phone again, she saw he'd sent her a text while she'd been away. The groupchat: [ _226 unread messages._ ]

[ _you're invited to this thing we're talking about you know :)_ ]

Really, it resembled plenty of other texts on her phone from people she'd decided it would look rude not to give her number to. But school had only been in session for a week, and she'd already heard more rumors about Luhan and Sehun than anyone else. So she figured it was probably pretty significant. 

The next day she was busy enough with the 11th and 10th graders—it appeared Luhan was an exception, and that most seniors tended not to look twice at any underclassmen. Minseok didn't mind at all. She only saw him once in the halls with his sister, laughing about something or other. Laughing heartily, his eyes scrunching up, his face looking younger. Minseok could see why he had the whole school wrapped around his little finger.

The school itself wasn't any harder than her school last year, she decided. Last year she'd been the rich girl as well as the popular girl and the nice girl and the pretty girl and it had been too overwhelming. Now, at least, everyone was rich, and everyone was pretty attractive, and if they weren't, they had enough to spend to make themselves so, or they just didn't care. It didn't make the pressure disappear entirely, but it eased some of it. She could still remember standing in front of that whole school last year, looking every single girl in the face, and thinking, 

_not one of you really knows me._

She went out with Hyerung after school again, to a smoothie store the whole school apparently swore by. Minseok ordered strawberry, but the smoothie was overly sweet and she was skeptical as to how much strawberry there really was in it. She drank half of it just to be polite. Hyerung introduced her to a brunette boy in a beanie named Jongdae. The first thing he said to her was:

"I would take you with me in the hunger games. You'd get all the donations, you know, the little parachute thingies."

"Gee thanks," Minseok replied. "And what skills do you have to offer?"

"I'm really good at playing pranks," Jongdae replied, winking at her. 

"He really is," Johnny added. "Stay on his good side if you value your sanity."

"Oh, come on, it's not that bad." Jongdae grinned, and Minseok liked it. It lit up his whole face. Everything about Jongdae exuded kindness, and Minseok found she kept replying to him even when she didn't have to, something she never did normally. She kept thinking about it when she got home, and her mom's friends all came over for a barbecue or something, and she sat with them trying to stay out of the conversation. That night, she put his number as her number one speed dial. Poor guy; he barely knew her. But he was better than everyone else.

The next day, Luhan caught her at the door as she was about to leave to get smoothies with Soojung, parting her friends as she'd never seen anyone do. It was impressive enough, and Minseok appreciated it instantly, because she knew how impossible it was to get her alone. She wondered if he'd heard that part of her constantly screaming for it like it was drowning. _Save me, leave me alone, take me away._

"Come, young one," he said, taking her hand with a devilish grin, like everyone she was talking to was invisible. "Let me take you to where the cool kids are." He didn't even bother saying hello to anyone around her, not even the girl who Minseok remembered said she'd sucked him off once. She looked at them with wide eyes and saw her own sentiments reflected: then, suddenly, they were silently urging her to go from behind her, looking suprised and somehow personally flattered. Still, Minseok shrugged and said a half-hearted goodbye as Luhan dragged her back into the school, back to her locker.

"It's such a weird place to be in when there's no kids here," Luhan said idly, dropping her hand, his voice echoing softly off the empty walls as he strode over to the closet. 

"I almost don't recognize it," Minseok deadpanned. Luhan held open the door for her and she went in skeptically, expecting to be trapped in a small closet with a thirst trap of a boy. Instead, she found the other side of the closet was wide open and opened onto a landing. Stairs decended to the left against a wall, but in front of her she had a view of what appeared to be a long, arched brick tunnel. Directly below her there was a table on which she didn't linger, because some of the substances on its surface looked decidedly illegal, and then a cluster of big-cushined red couches and chairs, lit by the occasional tall standing lamp. The whole tunnel had a few industrial lights installed in the ceiling, the wires exposed but neatly clipped against the brick. Farther back, Minseok saw cars parked, so she assumed the tunnel ended in a door big enough for them, somewhere.

"Impressed?" She jumped at the voice beside her ear. Luhan was grinning cockily behind her, watching her intently like he took personal enjoyment from any reaction she made. 

"Yeah," she said. "It's an impressive setup. Can I...?" 

"Sure. Of course. Everyone's cleared out for the moment, but I'm sure some will be back eventually. The code on the door is _sehun,_ but don't you dare tell any of you little friends, okay? This is invite-only."

"Yeah, you know, why  _am_ I invited?" Minseok asked, beginning to descend the stairs despite herself, drawn to the long crack along the left side of the tunnel. Pieces of paper were stuck into it so it looked like it was exploding with paper. She reminded herself to ask about it.

"Because you're fucking cute." Luhan was still on the landing, leaning against the railing and watching her as she wandered through the furniture. "Choose carefully." 

She looked at the various chairs. They weren't arranged in a circle, per say, but occasionally they would be tilted towards each other. She looked some more, picked her chair where she could see everybody but they weren't necessarily looking at her; they'd all have to turn a little. 

"Good choice. That's my chair." Minseok shot up from the chair; Luhan had somehow gotten down the steps and next to her in record time. He just shrugged when she got up, sitting in the chair himself, planting his feet firmly on the floor and draping his arms over the armrests. "I'm perfectly willing to share, Minseok."

It was the first time he'd said her name out loud. It sounded sensual coming carelessly from his lips, and he  _did_ look inviting. She bit her lip. She was almost two years younger than him. One at the moment. Her mom—no. She let him tug her on to his lap, unsurprised to feel how solid his thighs were beneath her. Luhan's leadership of the soccer team was known second only to his kingship over the Tunnel—which was apparently _this_.

His hands moved comfortably to her hips as she tried not to flush just from the position. "You know, I did hear a little about you," he said. "Everyone says you're nice. Tell me, what slight of hand did you pull to get them all so sure of that when I get the sense that you don't talk very much at all?"

"That's the secret, don't you know?" Minseok replied, smirking a little despite herself. She didn't get to talk to just one person very often, and she felt, probably wrongly, like Luhan understood some of her world. "You don't say anything and they just clap harder. It's when you open your mouth that they have stuff to judge you with." This got Luhan laughing.

"But you're so cute! You're so... fuck, you  _are_ nice, and you've barely spoken three words to me. It's witchcraft, that's what it is."

"You're right, I'm magical. Some people just have the gift," Minseok agreed seriously. "I mean, it seems to me you actively try to get people call you a buttface. But you have too much magic. They just can't do it."

"I'm not sure 'buttface' is the word they'd use, ever. Smoking hot, maybe."

" _Conceited_ ," Minseok mumbled under her breath, too quietly for Luhan to hear. His hands went from her hips to her waist, bringing her closer. He smelled like expensive cologne and sawdust.

"What was that?" he said, smiling a little to reveal a set of perfect teeth.

" _Conceited,_ " she said a little louder, not pulling away. He didn't seem phased by it, instead closing the small distance between them to pull her into a kiss, bringing her onto him, his hands traveling higher up her waist to steady her. He didn't even use his tongue, but when he pulled away to sit against the back of the chair and look at her smugly, Minseok found she was a little out of breath. He was a good kisser, then.  _Of course he was a good kisser._

She didn't have time to think much more because he sat up to kiss her again, his lips firm and supple. This time his lips prompted hers open and his tongue dipped into her mouth and she could only follow him, bring her hands tentatively his shoulders, and then when he pressed his mouth harder to hers, run a hand through his hair. 

They kissed for a long time. Heat flooded her face pleasantly and she liked the little sighs she could get out of him every once in a while, and he seemed content to sit there with her on his lap forever. She didn't think about time, or talking, or anything at all. They were good at it together, or at least she figured they were. It didn't get boring.

"Who is this one, now?" A bored female voice sounded from above her. Luhan groaned against Minseok's swollen mouth, giving her bottom lip one last nip before flopping back in his chair to gaze up beneath his lashes at his sister. 

"This is Minseok. She just transferred here from the  _Lion School for Girls_. Minseok, allow me to introduce you to my lovely sister, Sehun."

Minseok looked up at her. Sehun had a small sneer on her face and her arms were crossed. And she was  _tall_. Minseok swallowed. "Nice to meet you."

"I mean, at least she still has her clothes on."

"Now let's be civil, sis."

"I'm just saying."

" _Sehun._ " 

Sehun stuck her tongue out at him and wandered over to the table, doing something with her hands and then coming back to stretch her legs across a couch, lighting a joint and taking a long drag. Minseok shifted on Luhan's lap. 

"So the school.. the school really doesn't know this place is down here?" she asked. 

"More like we bribe the people who do know enough to keep them quiet, and everyone who thinks something fishy is going on is smart enough to keep their mouths closed." Sehun flashed a close-lipped smile. "Minseok honey, I'd get off Lu's lap before everyone else gets here if you want their respect."

Luhan made a sound of protest, his hands tightening on her hips petulantly.

"Oh, please," Sehun scoffed at him. Minseok, looking between them, decided it was probably advice to listen to when Sehun was being kind enough to give it, and slid regretfully off Luhan, hiding a smile at the bulge in his pants and instead sitting cross-legged on the couch next to him. 

"Sehun, dear," Luhan said, his voice sounding the slightest bit rougher than it had earlier, "I would be eternally grateful if you'd grab me a beer. Or a joint. But I'd prefer a beer, I'm parched."

"Do I look like your server? Get Minnie to do it."

"Minnie." Luhan chuckled, turning his eyes to Minseok, who stopped biting her lips with a guilty pop. "That's perfect. That's the cutest thing ever. Minnie, over there, on the back table—yeah, over there—" Minseok was up and padding over to the back table, still nervous about the variety of substances on full view. "Mini fridge is right beneath it. Right on the top shelf. I am fairly certain you are an angel." He took it gratefully and Minseok watched in fascination as his adam's apple bobbed when he took a sip.

"Intruder!" A boy's voice sounded from across the tunnel, and a group of four boys descended on the table of sin, spreading out across the furniture comfortably. 

"Guys, we have practice in an hour. You really thing coach isn't going to notice if you're baked?" Luhan frowned. 

"Who's the new one?" A tall kid asked, ignoring Luhan and lighting a joint. 

"Sophomore. Minseok. Mine," Luhan said shortly, looking annoyed. The tall one shrugged as Luhan turned to Minseok. "That's Kris," he said, pointing to the tall one, "That's Jongin, and that's Minho. Guys, where's Yixing? He's supposed to drop off some stuff for me today." 

"I'm here," came a light voice from the direction of the cars, and two more figures emerged, a boy and a girl. 

"Get  _off_ , Jongin," Minseok heard Sehun mumble from her couch. She looked over and saw Jongin sitting with his arm around her like they were a couple, Sehun shoving at him. She wondered briefly why he was wearing a basketball jersey if he was supposedly on the football team with the rest of Luhan's crew. About to ask, she looked back at the newcomers and saw the girl next to the person she assumed was Yixing staring at Sehun with a disturbing intensity. Well—maybe he played basketball, too. Maybe he just wanted to show off his arms. Either way, Minseok kept her mouth shut.

"Xing bro, Thank  _god,_ " Luhan continued. "We were almost out, this one goes through weed like it's fucking hay and he's a horse or whatever." He gestured to Kris.

"Han, that didn't even make sense." Minho frowned, but Luhan just shrugged it off. Minseok held back an amused giggle. Jongin had been distracted by getting himself a drink and Sehun drew her legs up on the couch, pulling smoke from her joint aggressively. 

"What's tonight after practice?" Jongin asked, returning to the couch and tickling the bottom of Sehun's shoeless feet, apparently for the satisfaction of seeing her stinkeye. Minseok thought she heard Sehun mutter  _where's your shirt_ to him, but she wasn't sure.

"Out to Chanyeol's," replied Luhan, sighing. "I know it's Friday, but I honestly can't be bothered with a party of our own tonight, and we've been invited. It's polite to go to other school's shit every once in a while. Shows we still know there's dirt beneath our shoes."

Kris whistled. "Harsh."

Sehun smirked. "You think  _going_ is harsh, you don't even know what me and Han have planned for the party itself."

Jongin perked up. "Party crashing again, sweetie? Remember what happened last time." He looked like he wasn't sure whether to be excited or scared. 

Sehun slid her eyes to Jongin. "Well, we're both single now," she said forcefully to him. She let the fact dangle in the air, until Jongin swallowed awkwardly. Luhan watched quietly, impassively.

"Is this about Chanyeol and Yeon?" Minho asked, breaking the crackling silence. Immediately, Sehun broke the burning eye contact with Jongin and turned to Minho, launching into a plan that consisted of mostly gossip and a considerable amount of plotting that Minseok couldn't dream of getting, first of all because she didn't know any of the people they were talking about.

It was a first for her. People never just left her out of a conversation entirely. It was like being alone, basically. Minseok sat there for a little while, listening to Sehun plot, Luhan suggesting things every once in a while, letting her mind wander, letting her lungs cloud with secondhand smoke. After some time, she got up as quietly as she could, wandering through the furniture, discovering a pool table nestled in it, and then moving back between the cars. They were all top of the line, luxury cars—unless they were upgraded, personalized cars. They were cars that screamed money. There weren't that many—maybe ten or twelve—but since the tunnel could only fit three across comfortably, they went pretty far back.

And no one followed her. Minseok smiled, leaning against sleek silver Maserati and taking a deep breath. 

* * *

"It's all going to fail spectacularly," Kris said finally, giggling. Tao had always found the sight unsettling—a boy the size and with the depth of voice as Kris giggling like he did. "Like, I know everyone in  _this_ school would do you, Hunnie, but that doesn't essentially extend to other schools. Unfortunately. Luhan on the other hand. Didn't you fuck her, dude? Like, way back?"

Luhan was getting really mad; the muscle in his jaw stood way out. He was so mad that he actually  _got up_ and marched over to Kris, snatching the joint from his hand and handing it gently to his sister, who took it from him gracefully. "Yeah, at a party, like, a year and a half ago. I don't remember much though, we were really drunk. If coach kicks your ass for being high at practice, I'm throwing you under the goddamn bus. I've stuck my neck out for you enough. You  _know_ you have literally the whole day  _after_ practice to get high."

He then started getting his things together. Tao looked at the slim watch on her wrist. It was almost time for the boys to disappear to soccer practice, leaving herself and Yixing and usually a few other floating seniors. Usually Sehun left with them to go hang out with her own friends. Jongin waved to her on his way out as he shrugged on his uniform-issue shirt, but Tao didn't dare wave back, not with the tension between him and Sehun today. Their breakup over the summer had been an explosive disaster: Sehun had stepped all over Jongin's feelings—more than she might have otherwise—but he'd been so whipped he'd kept coming back for more for  _weeks._ And that was just the abridged version Tao heard through Yixing. She also knew how close Jongin and Luhan were, so she could only imagine the family drama involved.

"Tao." A voice startled her out of her reverie. She looked up into Sehun's face, blinking in surprise. The second time in—what—less than two weeks? What was wrong with her? She also noticed, now that she was so close, that Sehun was  _tall_. But not in a bad way. Tao personally thought that if she wanted to Sehun could seduce Chanyeol and anyone else she wanted. She could probably make a living as a model.

"Yes?" She asked, clearing her throat and trying to look as innocent as possible.

"You're invited." Sehun looked a little nervous, her lips pressed together and her perfectly plucked eyebrows lowered. "To Chanyeol's party. Come with us."

"Why?" It was abrupt, and clunky, and Tao made a thousand curses at herself, because of course she  _wanted_ to go, of course she  _wanted_ to watch the shit show, if only for the half-baked idea of rescuing Sehun from it at the end. 

"I dunno." Sehun shrugged. "Keep it on the down-low, though. And wear something hot. You do own nice stuff, don't you? We don't have to play, like, sisterhood of the traveling pants?"

"Do I own something hot?" Tao smirked. 

Sehun rolled her eyes. "I honestly don't know why I asked. Why do I do these things to myself?"

"Because you like bating me into sexual innuendos for the rush of adrenaline." Tao chuckled and wiggled her eyebrows, suprised when Sehun didn't respond with a biting remark. Instead, a blush appeared, high on her cheeks, and she huffed like she was trying to cover it up. 

"Um, most of my girls will be coming? But part of what we're doing is getting  _them_ shit-faced pre-gaming so when we crash—well, it's not crashing because we're invited, but you get the idea—things go south faster. So like, stay sober and maybe you can drive, so to say, I mean, because, like, we have drivers and stuff."

"So I'm the designated driver." Tao's stomach sank. Sehun didn't even feel like getting one of her minions to clean up after her now? She had to get some girl who she didn't even know—who had never bothered her at all—to do it. _Say no say no say no._  "Well, it'll still be a clusterfuck. I wonder what a clusterfuck looks like sober," Tao said, forcing a smile, silently cursing herself for doing the  _opposite_ of what she'd meant to do.

Sehun gave a rushed smile. "Great! I'll text Xing the info." And then she was up the stairs, leaving Tao nestled in her usual chair with the chilly feeling that this year was  _not_ going to be as calm as she'd hoped.

* * *

Sehun sighed. "You'll just smell a little more of shampoo, that's all. It'll dry in the car. Your hair always dries perfectly anyways. I'll ruffle it and it'll look like you just had sex, or something." 

Luhan gave her a scathing look in the mirror, running another annoyed hand through his still-damp hair. "I know you don't want to be too late because of all the pre-gamers we have primed, but you could at least have timed it with the end of soccer practice. Given me time to take a damn shower and dry my hair." He sighed. "Cologne will—"

"Eh!" Sehun held the cologne bottle at arm's length from him. "I've told you a thousand times and I'll tell you until is sinks into your thick fucking skull,  _subtle_ cologne is sexy,  _copious_ cologne is deadly. We don't wanna kill Yeon, just seduce her."

" _We_?" Luhan raised an eyebrow. "When's the last time we tried that?"

"Jongin," Sehun said offhandedly. "And you know how that turned out. Turn around," She made a spinny motion with her fingers, and Luhan obediently turned to allow her to dab some cologne at the nape of his neck. "Let's go."

He followed her down the sweeping staircase of their main foyer and into their limo stuffed with drunk teenagers and brassy music coming from someone's phone speakers. Sehun made a face.  _Not even a fucking beats pill._ She searched the cabin for a sober face but found it disappointingly drunk. Her hand twitched against her phone, but she willed herself not to text the sultry, passive girl she'd invited on a whim. 

There was another limo of kids behind them. Tao had to be in that one. 

"You're awfully quiet," Luhan observed from his space reclining against his seat.

"I wasn't aware I was supposed to be saying something," Sehun responded, blinking away images of Tao swimming behind her eyes. _Chanyeol_ _._ She was struggling to remember a single thing about him. All she could think about was when the door to that other limo opened. 

"That's never stopped you before," Luhan replied, and he was absolutely right. But for once, she felt like dealing with her anticipation by herself, so eventually Luhan mentally shrugged and turned his attention to the much more attentive girl next to him. 

Chanyeol's mansion was less ostentatious than Luhan and Sehun's, but it was lit like a Christmas tree, people spilling onto the front lawn along with the faint pulse of music. A great cheer went up as the Oh's limos pulled around the driveway, and Sehun was startled out of her reverie somewhat, feeling her chest swell despite itself. LIke they were fucking royalty, that's what it sounded like. 

"Pull your skirt down," Luhan said, gesturing to her black minidress. Sehun rolled her eyes, tugging it down halfheartedly and letting the other kids tumble out of the limo before her. She felt a tug on her dress as she made to get out herself and looked back at her brother, annoyed. He winked at her, pulling her skirt the rest of the way down forcefully. "Let's go get 'em, sis," he said, a hand lingering on her back in solidarity and then disappearing as he greeted the host, who was stumbling out of the house, surprised at the distinguished nature of his company.

Sehun watched them for a second, familiarizing herself with the way Chanyeol interacted, gaging if he was acting tied to some faceless girl inside. He  _did_ seem rather eager to get back. Then she looked at the second limo, which was nearly empty, and stilled: Tao wore a charcoal grey dress that moved against her like a second skin, covering her chest to wrap around her neck. Her eyes were heavily lined like Sehun had never seen them before, and they were wide, and she was staring at Sehun. Sehun looked a little more carefully. Yes, those were dry-mouth signs. She'd seen them in boys who'd checked her out before. Sehun smirked slowly and saw it take effect on the girl as Tao flushed under her makeup and tilted her head to survey the house, the light catching on the highlighted angles of her face.

"Oh Sehun, if I remember? It's been a while." Sehun turned to the boy in front of her. Chanyeol looked back at her, the picture of friendliness. Suddenly, this was not what Sehun wanted to do. She thought about what she'd planned. Hook up with Chanyeol, have Han hook up with Yeon, then put on an indignant show like neither of them knew better.

"You know, I don't know if we've met at all," she replied, giving the boy a tight-lipped smile. "Are you throwing this party?"

"Yeah, well see actually, I'm—"

"It's kinda dull. I'd rather get away from it, how about you?" Sehun took a sensual step towards him. He took a subsequent step back, proper in his position, but still more then Sehun would have expected. She sighed inwardly; her idiot brother had probably pulled her skirt too low. But she didn't want to stay here, didn't feel like the lights and the music, didn't feel like  _this_ press of bodies. It felt monotonous and petty.

She brought a delicate hand to Chanyeol's chest, around the nape of his neck, and brought her lips to his ear, dropping her voice to a sensual whisper. "How about a drive with me and that blonde in the grey dress?" she asked. 

Chanyeol licked his lips, his gaze darting from her to Tao to the house to the rest of the drive to see how many observers they had. 

"I... look, I don't... I'm not sure..." he was flustered, too drunk to make the right decision but without the proper motivation to make the wrong one. Sehun turned to Tao and motioned her over with her hand. After a wary look, Tao approached. She walked like she was floating, and Sehun momentarily thought that  _it wasn't fair._  

Without hesitation, Sehun wrapped an arm around Tao's waist and pressed her lips to Tao's, immediately pressing her tongue into the other girl's mouth for the benefit of Chanyeol's eyes. She didn't even look at Tao afterwards, scared her face would betray something, instead looking back at Chanyeol and smirking at his wide eyes, grabbing his hand and leading him step by step back towards the limo Tao had emerged from. He followed in something of a dreamstate, at the last minute pulling a friend aside and whispering something urgently in their ear. 

Sehun took a moment to feel bad for him; the fact that she was who she was made everything more complicated for him, and if he thought she was offering anything sexual, he'd probably be thinking mostly with his dick anyway. It was simple to get him sitting in the limo and shut the door, whirling on Tao.

"I can't drive," she said before Tao could open her mouth. The girl looked angrier than Sehun had ever seen her, and if she hadn't been so high on adrenaline, she might have been intimidated and even a little bit scared. As it was, she was already prodding Tao towards the driver, kicking the poor man out and shoving a couple hundred dollar bills into his hands. 

"You want me to fucking drive? What, while you fuck him in the back, is that it? Am I—am I fucking  _bait?_  " Tao protested as she fell into the driver's seat.

Sehun smiled recklessly. "You didn't seem to hate it. No, I'm not gonna fuck him." She shut the driver's side door and walked quickly around to the passenger's side, sliding into the seat and praying Chanyeol was still in back, waiting for two beautiful girls to climb in after him. "Go!  _Go,_ goddamnit, before he gets out!"

With that, Tao was peeling out of the driveway, not needing any other reason to get away from that party. They were shooting down the highway in no time, and soon it was eerily silent, until Chanyeol decided to begin pounding on the divider.

Sehun sighed and lowered it a few inches so Chanyeol could speak to them. "Are you coming back? Or am I being kidnapped? I really don't get what kind of fucking game you're—" Sehun rolled her eyes and rolled the divider back up.

She turned when she heard chuckling from the driver's seat. "Do I amuse you?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. 

"Immensely," Tao responded. "you're heartless. The poor boy probably thinks we're off to sacrifice his balls to the god of hot girls." Sehun giggled. "Where are we going, anyway?" Tao asked.

Sehun shrugged. "I don't care. I didn't think that far ahead. I planned to stay at the party, but this works just as well." Yeon would probably look around the party for Chanyeol for a while, but she'd give up after a while, and that's when Luhan would swoop in, in all his fuckable glory. When Sehun got back, and they all had a _conversation_ , maybe they'd become the sort of household names in Chanyeol's circle as they were at Dorado. And if Sehun knew anything, it was that name recognition was key.

Tao didn't reply to her, just switched lanes ad took the exit to a neighborhood Sehun wasn't familiar with. She began to get uncomfortable when the houses and tall buildings rising around them became warehouses. "Tao, I know I said we cold go anywhere, but we do have to go back, and I actually—"

"Here," cut in Tao's clean voice. Sehun looked around.

"You took us to the  _train_ tracks _?"_

_"_ If you can think of somewhere better to pull over a limo and do questionable things in it without being questioned, let me know. Plus, the moonlight gets through the buildings better here." Tao motioned to the moonlight shining through the windshield onto Sehun's skin. It was getting paler, Sehun realized. The summer was retreating for good.

"You know, I've heard a lot of bullshit excuses for kissing someone, but that one's really up there," she said, but the words felt awkward leaving her mouth, and she couldn't get rid of the odd smile on her mouth.

"I never—I literally didn't say anything about—" Tao stared at her with wide eyes. "Are you okay? Who are you and what did you do with Oh Sehun?"

"I've never, you know,  _really_  kissed a girl," Sehun continued, leaning back against the seat and letting the moonlight seep into her skin, imagining it negating the effects of the sun. "Just what you'd expect at parties. Regular run-of-the mill fuckery."

Tao stared at her incredulously for a second longer, then a slow smile spread on her face and Sehun saw an idea form in her mind. "Well," Tao said, "In that case, you've been missing out." She cut the engine and turned leonine eyes, faintly glowing in the moonlight, to rake up Sehun's body. Then she slid a hand through Sehun's hair and brought her head close. 

First it was just a breath, and Sehun realized that Tao's breath smelled faintly of caramel. Then there was a light teasing of lips, just enough contact to bring Sehun's face swaying towards the other's. Then it was another contact, slightly longer, where Tao's lips brought Sehun's open so they were open the next time their lips touched. This time Tao kept their lips locked, coaxing Sehun's lips wider open, not pressing too hard, and playing with their tongues like she had no particular intent.

It wasn't kissing like Sehun had ever experienced, and when Tao pulled away Sehun nearly fell into her lap, seeking her lips again, wrapping her arms around Tao's waist and tugging needily. Tao gracefully crossed from the driver's seat to the passenger's seat, settling in Sehun's lap with ease, her dress riding up easily. Sehun left her hands on Tao's waist, her head tilting upwards, seeking her lips again.

Tao obliged, her face hard to read silhouetted against the moonlight sky. She licked the opening of Sehun's lips with just her tongue, then took Sehun's bottom lip in her mouth, sucking just a little bit before pulling back again. It was a maddening, arousing game of chase. Sehun whimpered when Tao finally deepened the kiss, licking at the top of Sehun's mouth and then the corner and then moving to her jaw.

Then she grinded a little in Sehun's lap and Sehun realized one of Tao's hands was massaging a breast while the other stayed tangled in her hair. She hesitantly brought hers lower, distracted by the cool air on the saliva on the places where Tao had kissed and the warmth of Tao's mouth on her neck. 

Sehun was rewarded by a breathy moan when she squeezed Tao's ass closer to her, liking the way she could feel every ripple in muscle through the other girl's dress. Their kissing was loud, and breathy, but she was enjoying herself too much to care. She couldn't remember the last time she enjoyed herself so much sober. 

"Hey! Who the fuck are you! Is it you goddamn kids again? I'll call the fuzz on ya, I'll call them!" An angry shout approached them from the side, startlingly close, and by the time Tao could extricate herself from Sehun, someone had approached enough to see them and then stomped away again.

A car engine started a few yards off to the symphony of Tao's " _Shit shit shit_." The girl clumsily fell back into the driver's seat, tugging her dress back down and starting the engine in the limo. Sehun sat still pressed against the passenger seat, hating the cool kiss of air that replaced the weight of the girl in her lap, her mind taking longer than usual to catch up to the situation.

"What. What—who was that? We're not supposed to be here, are we?"

"Well, we—no, not exactly." Tao was already barreling out of the train yard much too fast. There was a thump and a strangled yell from the back of the limo and Sehun suddenly remembered that they weren't even the only ones in the car. "I wouldn't worry too much. Well," Tao amended again, "Maybe worry a little. Old Man Rogers likes to chase down the kids that come to the train tracks and—shit—he's gotten pretty good at it." She jerked the car to the left and all of a sudden they were bouncing over the tracks where the concrete came up and made it possible for the luxury car, then they were swerving right again and the train tracks were out of sight, blocked by the metal wall of a warehouse.

"Let's just get back to the party?" Sehun asked, her voice sounding thin, even to her own ears. There were plenty of situations in which a normal person would shit their pants in which she would be perfectly fine, but this was not one of them. But hell if Tao was going to know she was scared. 

There was a revving of an engine behind them and headlights appeared in the passenger side mirror. "There he is. Hey, Old Man!" Tao said, a slight grin appearing on her face. Sehun began to wonder if Tao was crazy. Sehun began to wonder if this was why Tao never told anyone about what she did after school, or what she did period. Because she was drag racing limos with crazy old men who lived next to train tracks. It was only slightly out of the realm of possibility.

They plunged onwards until suddenly Tao was slamming the breaks and they were circling up onto an onramp and then exploding onto the empty freeway. Sehun didn't drive much, but she could tell by the way her body was glued to her seat that Tao's foot was heavy on the floor. She watched as the other girl edged the speedometer steadily upwards until it was much too fast for comfort and the headlights in the mirror dwindled into winks of stardust. "Would you  _slow down!"_ Sehun said, finally finding her voice, eyes wide.

"Oh, you love it," Tao replied, finally taking her foot off the gas and letting the limo coast at its breakneck speed down to a more acceptable pace. Sehun thanked whatever God was watching out for her that night that there were no cops on the road. "Don't worry about the Old Man, he hates the highway, and there isn't much he could do or prove once we get on it anyway. You look like you've thoroughly enjoyed yourself."

"I shouldn't look like anything," Sehun gritted through her teeth. "Your  _eyes_ should be on the  _road._  I'm never letting you drive again. Poor innocent Chanyeol probably threw up all over the back.

"Oh, shit!" Tao laughed. It was an open mouthed, full throated laugh that made her shoulders shake, and Sehun found herself attributing the adjective  _cute_ to the elusive girl next to her for perhaps the firs time. "I totally forgot he was back there!"

Sehun half-griped at her the whole way back, but Tao had that self-satisfied smirk on her face that reminded Sehun of Luhan—that one that said Tao knew Sehun was enjoying herself, even if she wouldn't admit it. She found her stomach flip in aversion when Chanyeol's house loomed in sight again, found that she could stay on the road for the whole night and still say it wasn't a night wasted.

"I regret to inform you, your majesty, that we have arrived back at your destination. I hope you've enjoyed the ride." Tao leaned back in her seat and Sehun watched her pull her guard up over her face, masking herself a little more thoroughly for the crowd at the party, and for the girl she probably assumed Sehun would turn into. 

She looked around at the driveway. Couples dotted the lawn here and there, and there was a drunk girl puking in the bushes with some hapless friendzoned boy holding her hair for her. None of it looked appealing at all. Then a familiar form crossed in front of their windshield, then backpedaled. Sehun sighed. Of all people, Jongin had to be the one who  _wasn't_ shitfaced in some girl's bed.

She looked from Jongin, to Tao, to Jongin again, who was staring at her through the windshield like he'd seen a ghost, or maybe an angel. "Well, there is one more thing," She said purposefully, not taking her eyes off her ex for a long moment, then looking at Tao. Miraculously, Tao understood instantly, licking her lips like a predator, her smudged makeup adding to the effect. The girl leaned her long body across the middle of the car—no doubt, Sehun thought bitterly, waving her ass deliciously in the air—and met Sehun's mouth for a full-on french kiss that was more tongue than anything else.

When she pulled away to sit back down, Jongin's mouth was hanging open and he had a wide-eyed, stupefied expression on his face that Sehun had always thought sort of made him resemble a puppy. The boy stared for a few seconds too long before stumbling away, no doubt to get much more drunk than he was already. 

"You know," Sehun said conversationally, "I stayed with him an extra few weeks because of Luhan, and because of his puppies. His dogs are so fucking cute, Tao. You try saying no to that."

Tao stayed conspicuously silent, and Sehun realized she was being surprisingly conversational to someone no one expected her to even look twice at. She sighed and climbed out of the limo again, unlocking the back and approaching the door like a tiger might bust out and attack her.

Chanyeol was pressed against the far wall of the limo, looking as pale as Sehun had ever seen anyone, and scared shitless. When Sehun stepped back to let him out, it was a mad scramble, and only when he was standing on his own lawn, apparently, did he feel like he could speak to her. "You're fucking crazy," was all he said. "You're  _crazy_ , you hear me?" And then he was storming back towards the house. 

Sehun sighed, massaging her temples and turning to Tao, who'd gotten out of the car and was now leaning on the hood like she owned it, having a staring contest with the actual limo driver. "I'm going inside to get Luhan," Sehun told her. She wasn't sure why she said anything—she certainly wasn’t compelled to—but Tao just nodded, shooting her a reassuring little smile that made Sehun feel like she could make it through that house, at least until she got to Luhan. And Luhan could take it from there. They'd always been good at picking up each other's slack.

* * *

“Who’re you snapchatting? Do I have to take away your phone privileges again?” Sehun craned her head to look over at Luhan on the bed, the light from the screen making her face a pool of blues.

“You don’t even have the authority to do that. The last time—“

“I absolutely do. We’ve agreed, like, fifteen thousand times that Sunday nights are no phone nights and I don’t care which hot piece of the night it is, she can get all hot and bothered on the thought of you, she doesn’t need pictures of you raising your eyebrows like a total fucking creep all over her screen.”

Luhan sighed, locking his phone and putting it aside. “Such a critic.”

“Somebody has to be.” Sehun turned back to the movie, tangling their legs and letting her body fall farther into the pillows. 

“And anyway, it’s usually me whining at you, anyway. You don’t even like _Jaws_ that much. Where’s _your_ hot piece of the night? I have J—“

“If you say Jongin I honestly might punch you in the face.”

“Jongin.” He got a light slap instead, and then, like she didn’t feel like retracting her hand, Sehun let it rest in his hair, a comforting weight on his head. 

“Well, it’s Tao, but I don’t have her number or her snapchat and I’m not to the point of desperation where I’m about to DM her. And even if I was, I wouldn’t, because I’m above that.”

“Tao, Yixing’s friend?” Luhan raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You’re sure?” He tried to recall a clear, flattering image of her, but she was always slouching, and she always seemed to be glowering at someone. He tended not to look too long at unfriendly faces. Plus, he knew that Sehun’s attraction to girls was a very private thing, and he was, he was fairly sure, the only person who she’d ever told.

“What do you mean, _am I sure_? I mean, I don’t know.” Sehun pouted, her fingers idly playing with his hair. “She sort of fucks with my entire life, so there’s that.”

“There’s that,” Luhan agreed solemnly.

“Well—“ Sehun sputtered— “Well, who’s _yours?_ Are you into, like, kids now?”

“Tell me Minseok isn’t objectively hot.”

“I’ll give you that she’s cute. She seems nice? I don’t know.”

“Cute until she’s grinding in your lap, then _hot_.” Luhan chuckled when he got another light slap on his cheek, slapping back this time.

“Han!” Sehun sat up indignantly. “Fine. You wanna know about Minseok? She was _me_ at her last school and she transferred because she just, like, said she didn’t like anyone there. Everyone was super butthurt. Then she disappeared for a summer and probably had a fucking depression episode or some shit and now she’s here being all popular again. So enjoy _that._ ”

“I will.” Luhan smirked.

“ _What?_ ”

“You’re deflecting. You _like_ her.” 

“Luhan, get off my case, I swear to fucking—“ Luhan was on her, tickling her sides until she was writhing, and they were both giggling and twisting up the comforter and probably coming dangerously close to knocking off the side lamp. They only quieted down when Sehun was too out of breath to fight back, instead flopping down and waiting for Luhan to get off and then giving him an extra slap on the face. Training, she always said. For when girls inevitably slapped him in the future. He wouldn’t even blink. 

They’d just hate him more for it, he always replied.

And she’d wink at him.

He kept seeing Minseok in the halls, even when he told himself he was past it; that Sehun was right, that she should just be a flavor of the night to him. There were plenty of sluttier seniors practically throwing themselves at him and his newly empowered senior self this year. She didn’t seem to be under any pretentions as to who he was, and she didn’t appear to expect anything from him.

If anything, she always seemed surprised to find him looking at her. When she did, she’d give him a friendly smile. That was what she always went to, a friendly smile, that was genuine, even if she gave it away liberally. He also saw her talking plenty of boys who he made it his business to know were available and, unfortunately, the definition of _good guys_ (the process to come up with this information was rather embarrassing and required an actual punch or two in order to keep his honor intact and stop people questioning why he was asking so much about the younger kids).

He watched her for a week. She went out with nice enough kids, he decided, and they seemed properly smitten with her. She didn’t buy anything from Yixing or any of the other dealers, but she didn’t narc on anyone or admonish anyone who smoked either. She turned in her homework and got A’s on her tests but the teachers didn’t seem to adore her like they adored the occasional teacher’s pet that popped up at the school. 

And that Friday he saw her leave the school holding hands with the kid named Jongdae. He watched them intensely, from the side, insulated from the flow and press of students as they pressed to escape the school by the sheer pressure of who he was. It was new for them, he decided. Jongdae was overjoyed and Minseok seemed… pleased. She was harder to read than he’d initially thought. It occurred to Luhan that he was monitoring Minseok with a similar intensity to that with which he monitored Sehun, which was disconcerting considering that Sehun was the one person Luhan would readily admit to caring about.

He’d had to call Jongin three times that week to hang out after practice just to take his mind off it, and he’d straight up booty called Yujin twice. He felt a little bit guilty about that. She probably thought something was going on. 

Something _was_ going on. 

He wanted _her. Minseok._

[ _The tunnel party is next friday, Minnie_ ]

He stared at the arched ceiling of the Tunnel. _Need to install a TV,_ he thought.

[ _I know_ ]

It was almost immediate, like she’d checked her phone when it had dinged and just texted what had come to mind. Girls _never_ did that.

[ _be my date_ ]

[ _that’s not a date that’s a party and since when do you date_ ]

He laughed out loud, much to the surprise of Kris lounging across from him. He laughed because she was right, and also because he still thought she was nice and she was definitely engaging in a drier form of communication than the warm naiveté he’d first experienced. Then again, it was all really the same thing—the same person. She’d called him conceited before he’d kissed her.

[ _fine, princess. text me your address. I’ll pick you up at 11. what’s that portmanteau people use for eating that time of day?_ ]

[brunch, you elitist.]

She texted him her address and then he was falling across Sehun, whispering in her ear that he needed her help because he was going on a date tomorrow and he had no idea what a date was.

* * *

Jongdae was crestfallen for a few seconds before the name _Luhan_ left Minseok’s lips, and then he was sputtering, as close to angry as Minseok could imagine he could get.

“ _Luhan_? _Oh Luhan?_ Listen, by all means, you know what, let him, let him, you know, let him seduce you, or whatever it is he does, but I don’t, listen, just let me know when Luhan doesn’t want to date you anymore, and just know it isn’t a reflection of you, it’s a reflection of him.”

“Has Luhan ever gone on a date with anyone?” She asked.

“I don’t know! I’m not in their grade, I stay the proper, respectful distance away, I concern myself with important things like beautiful girls.” Jotgdae pouted; Minseok sighed.

“Look, I’m still getting my feet here. I don’t want to stir anything up, I just… I just, maybe, want to talk to people without the preconceptions of a whole school on them. You too. Everyone. I wouldn’t worry too much.” MInseok smiled, hoping she sounded reassuring. “I’ll work it all out in due time. I’m not dumb.”

“No,” Jongdae agreed ruefully, “You are many things, Kim Minseok, but dumb is not one of them.”

So she went out to the curb at 11 to wait for Luhan. She waited five minutes, and then, like clockwork, a Mercedes slid up to the curb in front of her. _Right on time._ Because, of course, Luhan could never be expected to come _exactly_ when he said he’d come. An absurd thought.

He was wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. Minseok wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but she hadn’t expected this level of casual dress. She was used to seeing Luhan in his uniform of slacks and pressed button-down, usually with the blue jacket to go with. Well, her sundress would’t stand out too much. 

He looked at her over his sunglasses as she slid into the car. “About the date,” he said.

“Hello to you too,” Minseok replied. ‘Yeah, I’ve had a nice Saturday. A relaxing one. How about you?”

Luhan stared at her in confusion for a moment before a slow, amused smile spread over his face and he slid his sunglasses all the way onto his face, pulling away and driving them towards the city. “Cute. Hello, Minseok. I’ve had a kind of hectic Saturday, actually. It’s not a very long story. I, stuck with my current underdeveloped frontal lobe, decided we needed a TV in the tunnel. So I called a few people, but it’s actually spiraled into somewhat of a crisis because electrical chords turn out to be tricky things.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with a date at all, actually.” Minseok raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. He’d asked her and he’d committed. She wasn’t about to let an _underdeveloped frontal lobe_ be an excuse for not having one.

“Well, you will.” Luhan shook his head. “I feel like you’re judging me or something. I’d almost rather you tell me every other guy you’ve gone out with and let me beat them up so you have no one to compare me with at all.”

“I’m a very non-judgmental person, and that’s… a strange way to go about dealing with your feelings,” Minseok replied. 

Luhan shrugged. “Guess you don’t follow politics, then.” 

“Why?” Minseok did, but not closely, not under a microscope, like some kids at the school. She didn’t actually know a whole lot about Senator Oh.

“You haven’t made one offhand joke about me being like my father or learning from my father or some shit. That’s, like, everyone’s go-to.”

“You seem to be doing a fine job wallowing by yourself.” 

“Oh, you’re mistaken, love. I don’t wallow. It's undignified.”

They continued chatting until the car rolled to a stop and Minseok realized where they were, unable to keep a groan from escaping her.  “ _Here_? You took me _here_?” She contemplated what would happen if she got out of the car and proceeded to the closest bus station back home. 

“The TV installer people are about to riot and Sehun can’t come for another half hour. Seriously, another half hour—“

“You could have… just postponed?” Minseok said.

“Ah, but that would not have displayed my creative spirit.” Luhan grinned, and Minseok idly wondered if she should be scared at all by that grin. He left the car in one of the back spaces in the Tunnel but instead of taking her through the Tunnel, he took her back onto the street and around to the front entrance of the school, unlocking it with keys Minseok hadn’t noticed in his pocket. Minseok opened her mouth to protest again, but Luhan was already slipping confidently in, and she really had no choice but to follow, even when he turned and began to climb the three stories of the school and then made a beeline for the maintenance closet.

“Luhan, do you have a thing for closets, or something?” Minseok said, slowing down skeptically. The school was dark; only the hallways were lit and the classrooms sat dark and in the wings, feeling malignant. 

“Would you just trust me?” he asked shortly, disappearing through the door. Minseok almost said that no, he hadn’t given her any reason _to_ trust him, but he was gone and she didn’t think he’d hear.

There was a ladder past the door, not a closet. Minseok wondered if there were any closets in this school. She wondered what the maintenance guys did. 

She wasn’t ready for the breeze when she emerged onto the roof from the narrow passageway, shoving her hair out of her mouth quickly and looking around. The roof was flat concrete, with the occasional thing sticking out of the top that Minseok assumed had some purpose. Luhan was weaving towards the edge, the casual grace with which he moved on full display. It was a short, mesmerizing game of sun kissed cat and mouse to follow him to the edge, where a thick comforter had been laid out to coushin against the hard concrete.

“You prepared in advance?” Minseok asked, failing to keep the surprise from her voice.

“Well, concrete is hard, and I since I was dragging you back to the school, I thought it was the least I could do.” Luhan lowered himself onto the comforter. There was a concrete ledge of about half about half a meter separating them from the edge of the roof, but they could still look up at the sky and the buildings that rose up around them. 

“No, the least you could have done was nothing. You could have stood me up. I half expected it. Come to think of it, why are you being so nice to me? A nice ass can’t possibly account for all of this, not in the sea of people surrounding the both of us constantly.” She looked at him skittishly. “Unless it could.”

“Well, you’re not wrong, but you’re only partly right,” Luhan replied. “I’d never deny you an ass compliment. But I don’t think anyone could be that mean to you. Or maybe I’m going soft, I don’t know. Would you sit down? You’re making me nervous up there, being taller than me.”

Minseok giggled but sat as she was asked. “I don’t think I stand a chance, is the sad thing,” she said quietly, as he leaned up towards her, so that she could smell the faintest whiff of cologne on the city breeze. 

Luhan licked his lips. His eyes, reflected in the sunlight, glinted the same color as his hair. “Usually, I’d agree with you,” he replied just as softly, like they were trying to keep their voices from carrying on the wind. Like what they were saying would stay still if it were quiet enough. “But I think it might be the other way around.” 

He kissed her again, hungrily, drawing her up a little from the blanket with his mouth and groaning at the feeling of her. The sound vibrating from his throat sent shivers down her spine. She stayed tense the first few moments, too focused on the feeling of his lips, and of his hand sliding around the small of her back. But his lips were magic, and he had her relaxing soon enough, remembering what heaven it felt like to kiss him, and endeavoring to get those same satisfying groans.

Minseok never thought she’d like the sound of kissing—of his lips against hers, and his breath a hot gale in her ear, and the sound of her own breath too loud itself. Her heavy breathing made her chest rise and fall and strain against the corset of her sundress and Luhan was soon fascinated, leaving glistening saliva down her jaw and her neck to suck at her breast while she ran her hands through his hair. It was soft today—he hadn’t bothered to put any product in it. 

His body pressing against hers was a potent reminder that kissing wasn’t all there was, and while Luhan seemed content to do just that all day, Minseok wanted more. She’d wanted more from the first snapchat. She’d never thought herself a forward person, but Luhan was unconsciously rutting gently against her leg as he sucked at her jaw and she could feel him there, mostly hard, tantalizing. 

When his muscles tensed at her hand on his crotch it sent a tingling down her spine. He didn’t stop, or say anything, just let his teeth brush her skin briefly and pressed himself into her hand, letting his own hand, which had been propping him up above her, stray to grip her hip. She throbbed accordingly between her legs and a frail whimper slipped between her lips, the first sound she’d made so far.

Everything sped up after that. Luhan attached his mouth to hers again, taking her mouth as his own as she unbuttoned his pants and slid her hand into his underwear. His moan went straight into her mouth and down to her core, where she bucked up against Luhan’s thigh, needing _something._ She was giving him a simple handjob, using the limited experience she had, but he seemed driven to the edge of cumming by her very existence. His hand went from her hip to travel up the flesh of her thigh to finally grip her center, pulling her underwear up around it to tease out another, louder whimper.

He broke their lips only to breathe, diving back in as if she were air and he was dying. No; it was greedier than that: he wanted everything, all at once. Eventually he pushed her underwear aside, a finger and then two easily slipping inside of her slickness as he bucked into her hand in a fever. The pace got faster, and faster, and Minseok let her legs fall as wide as they would go, aching at how far his fingers reached, at what his tongue could do, at the way his weight on top of her made her feel secure and needed like she’d never been needed before. Of course it was addicting.

Luhan broke their kiss to let his head fall to her shoulder as he came, pressing his thumb against her clitoris and riding it out with surprised moans, the speed of his fingers never faltering until Minseok’s own legs were shuddering and her insides were trembling as she came. He panted for a second, then kissed her again, like he’d never intended to stop, like this had just been a distraction. His fingers were retracting, and he placed her underwear back where it belonged with surising and perhaps misguided care, doing little with his dick but putting it back in his boxers. 

When all was somewhat more presentable, Luhan broke away to hover over her with cloudy eyes. “Got carried away there,” he said, his voice rough. 

Minseok licked her lips. “Not at all,” was all she could think to say. _I want more_ , was what she wanted to say.

“Yes at all!” Luhan sighed and rolled over to lie on his back next to her, the button of his jeans undone and his shirt riding halfway up his stomach, his hair perfectly mussed, his lips swollen and pink. MInseok stared. “Fuck, you’d think I have the self-control of a dog,” he breathed.

“Look, don’t take this the wrong way, because they say you’ve got a pretty big head around here, but it’s my… um… pleasure,” Minseok replied.

“Oh, sure,” Luhan said sarcastically, turning to her, opening his mouth to say something else. Then something in her eyes stopped him, and he looked a little closer. “Or maybe it is.” He turned onto his stomach, looking down at her. From her perspective, there was a halo around his head. An auburn halo of sun. “You really want to know why you, besides the ass?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I see a bit of myself in you. You know, my sister had you pegged from the moment she laid eyes on you. Don’t give me that look, she really did. I don’t even have to ask about last summer to know how hard it probably was for you. Or last year, actually. You see people and you watch them vie to be part of your world, or to get a piece of you, but none of them seem to actually make it. Intimacy is a crazy thing. You can get obsessed with it if you’re not careful.”

Minseok stared at him. Opened her mouth, closed it. Tried for a few moments to wrestle her hear back from him, trying to tell herself that he didn’t deserve it, that he’d done nothing to deserve it. 

“How would you know?” She finally asked, her voice high and thin. “It’s like you’re speaking from experience.”

“Well.” Luhan shrugged. “Sex is nice. It’s inherently intimate, even just for a little bit. Other than that I’m hardly a guru. Jesus, if I have intimacy with anything it’s a bunch of bricks below a school that will smell like weed for all eternity.”

“Sex?”

That made sense.

_Of course it was addicting_.

Being that close to someone.

Luhan didn’t respond.

“Well then fuck me, for god’s sake.” She said it timidly, like she was asking for a promotion or a raise. Luann’s mouth popped open, and his eyes widened, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard and seen come from her mouth. She watched as the words hit him full force, and he turned his head to one side as if to tip them out on ear. 

When he looked back at her, he seemed worried—agitated. “You’ve got to stay with me, fuck— I need this again. I’m _going_ to need this again, do you understand. Probably and again after that. And again. You’re fucking me up, Minseok. It’s like reverse _Grease_. I…” he trailed off, licking his lips. “I wanna do shit like _this_.” And he tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear.

Minseok sighed, right in his face, agitating his hair. Why was he making this so about feelings, so all of a sudden? “Well, _I_ went on the date because Yoonji said you had a pretty dick.” 

That got Luhan laughing. “Remember when you wouldn’t say the word _asshole_ , like, a week ago? What happened to that girl?”

Minseok shrugged, happy that she’d gotten him to smile. 

* * *

“I’m starting to think you really live here or something.”  Tao looked up at the figure above her. She recognized the voice, but she couldn’t quite connect the face with anyone she knew. The smoke she let out of her mouth didn’t help to clear up the image.

“Well, you’re blocking the TV. Think elsewhere,” she replied. 

The platinum-haired figure turned their head to look at the TV, then back at Tao, then shrugged, getting out of the way of South Park. Then the couch dipped, and long legs were crossing next to her, followed by the telltale flick of a lighter and puff of smoke. 

Tao turned her head to study her companion a little more closely. She had short, shoulder-length blonde hair, and was long everywhere, with strong eyebrows and cheekbones and _shit_ it was Sehun. Tao swore aloud.

“Sehun! The fuck?”

Sehun jumped too, surprised by Tao’s sudden outburst. “What? The fuck what? Did you get stabbed by a vengeful fairy?”

“Your hair!”

“Oh.” Sehun deflated, disappointed at the mundane turn of events. “Where have you been all day? It’s all the school could talk about. Wait, actually, where _have_ you been all day?”

“Cutting. Why did you… you know…” Tao found she was mourning Sehun’s longer, darker hair. It was one reminder lost of them in the car, and her hands in that hair, pulling Sehun’s head back for better access…

“Cutting like, cutting school, right? You can’t just say that, I don’t know what to think.”

“Yes, cutting school.” Tao rolled her eyes. “If you looked out the window or ever went anywhere but this school or this tunnel you’d know it was a beautiful day today. Not a cloud in the goddamn sky. I wanted—“ She cut herself off. She’d been really close to letting too much slip and she hadn’t even been smoking for that long.

“Excuse me, Caulfield. Lord knows I’d rather get skewered over my choice of hair color than spend a pleasant day outside.”

“So? Why’d you change it?” Tao was still curious.

Sehun shrugged. “I was getting pale. It was that time of year again. And don’t you dare fucking say dark looks better with pale skin, I know what the fuck I’m doing.”

“I wasn’t about to,” replied Tao. Instead, she’d been preoccupied, examining Sehun’s skin, realizing that unlike her own, it had lost most of its tan from the summer and was nearing a perfect milkiness with alarming speed. “I like it,” she mumbled, turning back to the flatscreen now hanging from the ceiling. “And by the way, your brother decided to install a television over the weekend.

“I noticed,” drawled Sehun. “I apologize. He didn’t actually check with me. The shit decided he wanted a TV, but then decided he wanted a date with that new kid at the same time, so he left _while they were instilling it_ to pick her up, then went off to the roof and scoodlipooped while they were putting this thing in. Forgot to bribe the right people about keeping mum, so that I spent all weekend cleaning up his mess.”

Tao giggled. “ _Scoodlipooped._ ”

Sehun slid her eyes from the TV to Tao. “See, you’re too stoned to even appreciate my woes. Shame on you.”

Tao replied, “No, no. I’m—it’s just that if you were really that annoyed, you could just _leave_ for a bit. I mean, it’s not that hard.”

“Name me a single responsibility you currently have,” Sehun shot back.

“Appreciating your woes.” 

Sehun punched her lightly in the arm, and Tao swung back, missing by a solid foot. “You’re queen of the castle,” she said, once she’d settled down again. “There’s a word. It’s on the tip of my tongue.” 20 minutes could have gone by, or only one while Tao searched her mind for the word. She’d lost track of the storyline on screen, but it all had something to do with Oprah’s vagina. “ _Delegation,_ that's it! People will pick up what you drop, at least for a little while. I have the keys to an FBI safehouse in the middle of Nowhere, New Jersey if you ever wanna leave. It has a pool. A nice one.”

“Do I want to know why?” Sehun asked. “Shouldn’t I be the one with the keys to… you know what, never mind. Forget I asked.”

“M’kay.” Tao settled lower into the couch. 

“You’re actually going to forget it. I…” Sehun shook her head in Tao’s peripheral vision.

* * *

She had cause to make good on her offer sooner than expected. The story broke the next day with the maleficent force of a hurricane. Tao made it a habit to read a short summary of the news in the morning on her phone at breakfast, but when she saw the words [ _Senator Oh implicated in deadly hospital bombing and surrounding operation_ ], she flipped the TV on and loosened her tie, the need to make it to school on time immediately slipping from her mind.

Sehun’s father was blown up on the screen, the words [ _Careless or Premeditated?_ ] written as the headline underneath his photo. The reporter’s voice had the uptempo beat that signaled the beginning of a news cycle: “Earlier this morning, while America slept, a hospital full of unarmed civilians was accidentally bombed by American forces. The initial order was traced back to Senator Oh Kangyoon, who has been tied up in the area for over a year in both personal and state financial—“

Tao was up and out the door with her backpack, not bothering to say bye to her mom before grabbing her keys and scrambling for her car. The drive couldn’t be over fast enough, and her leg bounced up and down, and she skipped from radio station to radio station, not wanting to hear the full story but unable to stay completely away from it, even on the classically shallow pop channels. When she finally skidded into her spot into the tunnel, it was already full and the tunnel was deadly silent, which meant bad things.

It meant everyone was upstairs, in school, and there was drama. 

She left the keys in the car and the garage door open, a big no-no that Luhan would surely kill her for if he ever found out, but she had to hope that he’d be preoccupied at the moment. It didn’t take her long to race along the length of the tunnel and up the steps, throwing open the door to the closet, and the swinging open the door to the rest of the school—just as it was shoved inward. 

Sehun stared at her, off-balanced for a moment, before Tao had her wits about her again and was grabbing Sehun by the wrist and tugging her into the closet. A wave of sound followed the other girl and a press of people, some of whom Tao recognized and knew technically had access to the Tunnel. She took one look at Sehun and shut the door in their faces, bolting it for good measure. There was a good amount of indignant knocking and shouting, and it didn’t cease as Tao pulled Sehun back into the Tunnel and down the steps, instead just becoming fainter and fainter.

As the main school got farther and farther away, Tao let Sehun’s wrist go and watched as the tension in the other girl’s shoulders released in degrees, though not entirely. She finally stopped walking when they stood in front of the crack, brushing her fingers along the worn edges of old love letters of students long graduated. “Are you okay?” She asked.

Sehun ran a hand through her hair, the industrial light of the tunnel making it shimmer lightly. “Thanks for asking. No. But thanks for rescuing me. My knight in shining fucking armor.”

“Don’t act so sarcastic.” Tao crossed her arms, watching as Sehun began to pace. “Are you… _going_ to be okay?” She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. She couldn’t claim to know Sehun well enough to really help, and she had no idea where Luhan was at the moment. Not like she particularly savored the idea of talking to the fuckboy anyway. 

A dry laugh. Then, “Yeah, eventually. It’s not a very sexy scandal. People will get distracted, dad will be fine. He’s a slippery motherfucker. At least he didn’t, like, cheat with an underaged sex worker or something. At least, he didn’t get caught,” she muttered pessimistically. “Is that offer still open?”

“Offer?” Tao feigned, but she knew exactly what Sehun was talking about, and was already walking back towards her car. 

“An FBI safehouse with a pool. Do safehouses have weed? Is that a contradiction?”

“It’ll have whatever’s left from the last raid. Might have nothing, might have a tone of coke, who knows.” Tao motioned for Sehun to follow her, her face breaking into a triumphant smile when she heard the pattering of Sehun’s feet behind her. 

They were on the road before the sun had finished rising, the top down despite the sharp bite of the wind. Sehun’s hair flew around her face like a tornado, but she had her face tilted back like she was being lifted by it, like she could be lifted from the car and the world and the universe. 

They didn’t say a thing the whole ride, so that it felt weird to clear her throat when they got to the cabin Tao remembered. It was as if she had conjured it from her memory, fresh-wood smell and all, and the key fit in the lock, which had her breathing a sigh of relief—she knew they regularly changed the locks. 

“Come on in,” she said, holding open the door. Now that they were here, Sehun looked a little nervous, but more tired. “Bed through there, the TV gets most channels plus HBO and netflix and stuff, and it should be pretty well stocked with food in the kitchen.” She gestured to the fairly rustic kitchen to her right. “I know it’s not the lap of luxury, but on the plus side, you have to drive a couple miles to see another soul.”

“It’s perfect,” Sehun breathed. But still she stood awkwardly in the middle of the cabin.

“So?” Tao shut the door behind her. “How can I help make you okay?” She cringed at how that sounded.

“Drugs.”

Well, that was easier than she would’ve thought. She nodded and went to the kitchen, finding the lock to the pantry taped on top of the cupboards and popping her head out to grin at Sehun. “You’re in luck.” She retrieved two big bags of weed and one of tablets with little smiley faces on them and brought them over to the girl, who had finally perched on the edge of the worn, overstuffed couch that was startlingly similar to the ones in the Tunnel, if a little more worn and of a little coarser quality. 

Sehun frowned. “We have no way to ingest that.”

“Bullshit!” Tao smiled. “We have all day and nothing to occupy ourselves. Smoking is boring. Look.” She opened the cabinets beneath the island to reveal big bags of flour, sugar, and other baking accoutrements. Sehun was shaking her head hard, her hair fanning out around her face.

“No. No. _Tao._ I don’t bake. I’ll—I’ll make them taste all leafy or something!” She sounded like she was pleading. Tao laughed. 

“Then they will taste leafy, no big deal. No one’s going to judge you, jeez. Take one of these and let’s get started. It’ll at least take your mind off everything at home.” She held out a tablet and took one in her hand for herself, fetching them glasses of water and clinking hers with Sehun before downing the pill. 

Sehun looked at her glass in amazement after she’d drunk, like she hadn’t expected herself to do such a thing. “I’ve never run away before, you know,” she said. “I even turned my phone off, just now. Luhan’s always known where I was. Generally.”

“Think of it as laying low,” Tao replied as she took out the various things she remembered you needed for baking brownies. “Just until this thing blows over. It’s what most kids do anyway.”

She was right—the school was high profile enough that most kids had a parent in the public eye in one way or another. There were scandals aplenty, and whenever one broke, there was usually a notable absence for a couple of days, generously forgiven by both the faculty and the teachers. It had become so expected that there was less of a media frenzy now than there had been when Tao was a freshman because even the TV networks knew that the hot topic of the day wouldn’t be showing up for school.

The only difference here was that it was usually the parent keeping their child out of the public eye. Instead, it was Tao keeping Sehun out of the public eye. No one who associated with Sehun even knew who Tao was. “I’m not most kids,” Sehun answered, like she could read Tao’s mind. 

“In any case,” continued Tao, “One cup of flour, in that bowl there.” She watched as Sehun held the measuring cup out at arm’s length like it would bite her. “Here.” She put her phone with the recipe down on the counter in front of Sehun. “You keep adding the dry ingredients, I’m gonna put some music on.” _And grab my camera._

Sehun looked back at her with wide eyes, but Tao didn’t give her a chance to respond. R&B soon filled the cabin on cleverly hidden surround-sound speakers, and then Tao had her film camera from her car sitting comfortably around her neck. 

She came back into the cabin quietly, under the noise of Kehlani, and discovered that more of the flour and sugar seemed to have gotten onto Sehun’s clothes than into the bowl, and that now she was coughing in a cloud of baking powder. She couldn’t help _tsking_. “Can’t leave you alone for a second, can I?” And then there was a flash and the moment was captured forever. Tao was positive it would be an amazing shot. 

“I have never been a good cook. I would have told you that. This is on you. You can’t just—“ Sehun huffed, clearly unhappy with the embarrassing situation she’d been discovered in. Tao crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. Weakly, Sehun threw a bit of flour at her, managing to dust the shoulder of her jacket in white. Tao let her eyes wander down to the flour, then back to Sehun.

“Because _that_ isn’t going to look suspicious at all.” Tao took a casual step forward and then lunged, spraying Sehun with a little flour that, to Tao’s chagrin, seemed like it got a little in her eyes. Sehun let out a little shriek but Tao was already all the way across the cabin, her hands out in her own defense. “As much as I’d love an all-out food war, I don’t want to clean it up and I really do want those brownies.”

Sehun paused, seeming to think. Then she lowered her hand in surrender, moving to the side to make space for Tao at the counter. Cautiously, Tao approached again, thinking it best to leave her camera over by the couch. “You’re right,” replied Sehun, as she came closer. Then, when Tao was right next to her, she sprayed her right in the face anyway so that Tao was coughing and choking on it, but laughing at herself at the same time, because what else should she have expected from Sehun?

She didn’t retaliate and instead went about doing most of the making of the brownies herself while Sehun watched and handed her things every once and a while. Tao worried that perhaps she was in her own head, thinking about the things she was running away from, but instead she seemed fixated on watching Tao, and her hands. 

They watched an old sitcom while the brownies were baking, although the last few minutes were hard, because Sehun seemed unable to resist remarking on how good the whole cabin smelled for the duration of two minutes. When Sehun bolted up at the beep of the oven, Tao contemplated the fight to get Sehun to leave them to cool, and decided it would be a losing battle. 

Sehun let out a long groan when the brownie first touched her tongue, letting her body fall against the counter and tilting her head in that special way of hers, like she was offering herself up to someone above. Tao snapped another photo, unable to contain herself. The lines that Sehun made against the backdrop of the kitchen were too perfectly graceful.

They ate entirely too many and soon every cartoon on TV was giggle-inducingly funny. They didn’t talk about anything important at all: not school, or anyone at it; not their parents, or anyone associated with them; not even each other, until Sehun picked up Tao’s camera and started playing with it.

“Careful,” Tao mumbled, swiping it away from Sehun’s spidery fingers. “That’s sensitive film. I have a picture of you covered in flour on there. ’S very valuable.” They’d since shrugged off their formal school jackets and kicked off their shoes and were laying side by side on the couch in their stockings, skirts, and dress shirts. 

Sehun pouted. “That’s not very pretty. I’m very pretty, you know.”

“Not lacking in confidence either, I see,” deadpanned Tao, fiddling with the focus so Sehun’s dark eyelashes were in stark focus. Sehun sucked in a big sigh and curved her body a little on the couch, flicking her eyes towards the camera in a coy expression. Tao snapped the picture, noticing that Sehun kept her shirt buttoned up much higher than she did, but the effect was Sehun’s shirt appeared to slither skintight across the girl’s body. 

“So is this your mystery thingie?” Sehun asked, slowly flipping onto her stomach so that she was kneeling on the floor, her elbows on the couch, her eyes gazing seductively up at the camera, pupils dilated wide with brownies. _Snap._ “Taking pictures?”

“I have plenty of mysteries.” _Yes._

“I think it’s whimsical.” Sehun was sitting on the couch properly again, her ankles tucked together primly, back arched slightly, a faintly innocent, surprised expression coming over her face. _Snap._ “Better than writing a boring old book about your adventures, Caulfield.” She moved to go into another pose, but Tao caught her jaw, stilling her in profile and keeping a finger on her chin until she was sure Sehun wouldn’t move. The light from the window, diluted by the curtain covering it, cast her profile into half-silhouette, the rest lit artificially by the television. The colors when they came out in a print would be mesmerizing on the planes of her face. Tao could observe as much with her own two eyes.

Carefully, she put the camera down, her heartbeat perking up. Licked her lips. Sehun had turned to look at her quizzically, and had the distinct countenance of someone about to complain—perhaps that Tao hadn’t managed to get every flattering angle. But Tao could never get _every_ flattering angle. She’d much prefer: leaning in quickly until she was only a breath away from those shining, vivacious eyes, then placing a teasing kiss on those soft lips, daring Sehun to search for more.

Sehun was high. Sehun searched for more. Here hand came up to slip under Tao’s hair and around her neck, bring her mouth back down to her own. There was less trepidation in this kiss even than in the last one, her mouth opening immediately for Tao, her tongue eagerly sliding against Tao’s own. It made Tao smirk mid-kiss, and it gave her the audacity to gently push Sehun down onto her back along the couch, which was wide enough and long enough to accommodate an injured, full-grown man.

One of Sehun’s legs hitched around Tao’s waist, pulling her closer, in a wordless plea to do something as Tao worked on teasing the other girl with her mouth as much as she could. She popped the first few buttons of Sehun’s shirt and was immediately tempted with other places to kiss, temporarily preoccupied with undoing the rest of the buttons and sucking lightly on Sehun’s breast before being tugged back up to Sehun’s mouth with an impatient whine.

“Yes?” She mumbled against the other girl’s gyrating mouth. She was rewarded by another frustrated sound from the back of Sehun’s throat, until Sehun finally broke free, her lips agitating the hair that fell against Tao’s ears and her hot breath a shot of aphrodisiac. 

“To-uch m-me, dammit.”

Tao’s hand was immediately on Sehun’s thigh, kneading, shoving the thigh-high stocking down a bit, working its way up to the girl’s ass. In turn, Sehun’s hands were buried in Tao’s hair, tangled in gold. Sehun’s legs fell more open as she bucked up towards Tao, until finally Tao brought a hand to her underwear.

“Fuck, you’re soaking.” She breathed. A huffed laugh in return from Sehun that turned into a moan when Tao pulled the panties up, causing friction against her core. Then she was dragging them down and stroking the pads of two of her fingers along Sehun’s leaking slit, her other hand steadying the girl behind her back as she squirmed and panted. Everything was chocolatey.

She tried to keep kissing Sehun, but the girl was distracted now, so she satisfied herself with the girl’s jaw, slipping one finger into her and moving it languidly. An annoyed whimper vibrated against the hot skin against her collarbone where Sehun had buried her head, having pushed Tao’s shirt most of the way away. Obliging, Tao added another finger, scissoring deeper into her. A mumbled string of profanities fell from Sehun’s mouth, and Tao added a third finger, savoring just how _Sehun_ that was, vulgar but sinfully sweet to the extreme.

Sehun was then rendered speechless, a mess of stuttering moans as she clutched Tao’s shoulders, her head thrown back. Tao licked a shining stripe up her throat, loving the play of light as Sehun tossed slightly at the jostle of her fingers and the contractions of her own body. She felt Sehun clenching around her digits, heard like a thunderclap the drawn-out whine and felt the girl’s back arch, and let the girl ride her high before gently pulling her fingers out and pressing the heel of her palm against the fabric of her underwear, which was wet in its own right.

Sehun watched her with dusty pink high on her cheeks, her eyelashes looking particularly dewey and amazed at the girl above her. She watched like that as Tao let her own underwear drop, slipping two fingers in at once and letting her head tip back at the feeling, surprised when she felt Sehun’s fingers on her ass tugging her down so she was lying on top of the other girl. Before she could open her mouth to say anything, a single one of Sehun’s slender fingers had joined her two fingers and she gasped at their opposing directions, her legs falling open over Sehun’s body, her mouth falling onto Sehun’s. 

She let Sehun do most of the moving, curling her own fingers every once in a while, until she felt herself coiling and spiraling, and conveyed it by sucking a dark hickey onto the fading tan of Sehun’s chest. The low groan at the touch of her tongue on the bruise was what she needed to push her over the edge, moving quickly as Sehun’s thumb pressed against her clit, chasing her through her orgasam until her legs were trembling slightly and she withdrew her fingers.

Well-fucked and still hazy, Sehun wrapped her legs all the way around Tao’s waist like a sloth, pulling her closer and placing a trite kiss on Tao’s temple. “I need a nap,” she mumbled right in Tao’s ear, louder than she needed to, making Tao wince a little and grip at Sehun’s ass; Sehun was really squeezing with her legs. 

Sehun lessened the pressure and they relaxed into a position rather comfortable, Tao reaching across Sehun to mute the television. “And then later, maybe tomorrow,” continued Sehun, like there had been no interruption, “I wanna go to a party. Do they have parties in the country? I don’t know how to square dance,” she lamented sadly, then snuggled against Tao a little more.

Tao sighed and decided that didn’t really need a response. She knew a club half an hour from the safehouse by name, but not by experience. One of Yixing’s friends had mentioned it once. It would have to do, because it was becoming apparent that there was no denying Sehun something she wanted.

She was outside taking pictures when Sehun woke up. There was a stand of pines just outside the cabin, taller than most, lacking branches for a good twelve feet before green needles settled to create shade from the sun. It was a challenge for her, with the light and the lines and the perspectives. She didn’t hear Sehun until the other girl wrapped her arms around her waist and pressed a hesitant kiss to the bump on Tao’s spine where her neck met her shoulders. 

“I was getting lonely,” she whined. “I’ve been awake for, like, five minutes.”

“Wasn’t there anything you wanted to watch on TV? Or brownies to eat?” Tao turned, smiling with half her mouth despite herself at the rumple in Sehun’s hair which was usually perfectly in place. 

“Mmm probably, but I, like cats, am curious.” Sehun was backing Tao towards a tree, and Tao felt the rough bark connect with her back. Sehun cocked her hip as she stood in front of her, taking one of the longer pieces of Tao’s hair and idly braiding it quickly. “You have a tattoo.” Her eyes slowly travelled from the braid to meet Tao’s eyes, her smirk accompanying her accusation.

Tao hung her camera on a tree branch securely and crossed her arms. “Maybe I do.”

“I wanna see again.”

“I doubt you were paying very much attention the first time. I’m surprised you even noticed it. Se—the fu—“ Sehun’s hands were working at the buttons of her shirt, but her protestations were silenced by a hot, rushed kiss full of tongue. Sehun tasted like chocolate and cherry. Thus distracted, it was easy for Sehun to tug Tao’s shirt off, leaving her in her simple white bra that contrasted prettily against her dark skin. 

“A sword?” Sehun’s hand ran along Tao’s side, along the tattoo right below Tao’s bra strap. 

“Yeah.” Tao was still trying to catch her breath from being kissed so suddenly, shivering slightly as Sehun’s hand traced the ribbon wrapping around the blade. “I trained when I was little, you know. You’re safe with me, kid.”

“Hm.” Sehun left her hand there, letting a finger run up and down the sword as her eyes travelled back up Tao’s body. 

“Didn’t even know you liked girls,” Tao murmured, fascinated by the blush high in Sehun’s cheeks and the extent to which she seemed to relish this. As much as Tao, even. 

“You do now,” Sehun replied, taking a few steps back and tipping her head back, looking up at the canopy. Tao noticed proudly that the hickey she’d made early was still there and had darkened to a light purple against Sehun’s neck. Sehun hadn’t buttoned her shirt up properly, and her black pushup bra peeked out of her shirt. She hadn’t even pulled up her socks properly. Tao reached slowly for her camera, like she was in the presence of a deer she didn’t want to disturb.

“I take it you’re not keen on telling the whole school?”

There was a pause. Then, “I don’t want to talk about school. Come eat brownies and kiss me and watch cartoons or whatever.” 

“Wait!” Sehun paused in the middle of turning, thrown a little off-balance by Tao’s voice. Tao took the picture. 

Sehun’s laugh echoed around the stand of trees. “It’s like you’ve never had a subject to take pictures of before.”

“Yeah, you’re probably used to it,” Tao mumbled, but she kept snapping anyway. Sehun was leading her towards the cabin, and with the promise of brownies and kisses and cartoons Tao abandoned her pictures to the moment. They did just that: touching most of the time, laughing every once in a while, talking a little bit, playing with each other’s hands like mortals fascinated with demigods. 

The sun soon began its descent, and Tao made them some of the ramen stashed in the cabinets, and they watched old James Bonds until Tao’s eyelids drooped and Sehun quietly turned down the sound on the TV, playing with the ends of Tao’s hair as she drifted asleep. 

She woke up in the bed the next morning, which gave her occasion to believe Sehun had somehow managed to carry her to the bed during the night. Her back, she was sure, appreciated it. Sehun was passed out next to her on her stomach, her limbs splayed out every which way, her ankle brushing across Tao’s. Tao lay there until Sehun stirred and then pretended to be asleep so Sehun could wake her up with a coy little bite on her shoulder, and they could smile shyly at one another, and lie in bed for another hour, the entire day ahead of them to waste.

They wasted most of it beside the pool, which was regrettably too dirty to actually swim in, but which gave a pleasing view of the forest and was supplied with exceedingly comfortable lounge chairs.  _Goddess chairs,_ Sehun called them, and Tao had to laugh, because this was a girl of privledge they were talking about, getting excited over a few strips of plastic stretched across some bent pipe.

“So where are we going tonight? Is there anything for us to wear? Although I’m sure we could work the schoolgirl angle if we had to.” Sehun looked over at Tao over her sunglasses.

“Place called Cloud Nine. I dunno much about it, but. And we can raid the closet here. I’m not sure how much there will be, though. I for one am just going to change in to the shorts and t-shirt in my car.”

Sehun nodded, then retreated to the cabin. Tao took a moment to admire the view of her retreating behind before following her in. 

They were booty shorts, and it was a crop top, so really it wasn’t an altogether inappropriate outfit for the club. Not to mention it went fine with Tao’s slightly smudged makeup and mussy hair. Sehun found some shorts that coupled with a belt that stayed on her and an old t-shirt with the name of the town on it that Tao helped her cut it to presentability. 

Cloud 9 was located in a suburb of the city in what used to be a warehouse. They arrived around, ironically, nine, and it was already fairly crowded. Tao tipped the guy at the door a couple hundred and they slipped through easily, and with a few more hundreds dropped they had free access to the bar. Sehun loosened up as soon as she saw what kind of place it was: most everyone was under thirty and half of them looked _high._ The music had a deep, pounding bass that made it hard to for Tao to hear herself think, much less Sehun, but the other girl’s smile spoke for her. She smiled rarely enough.

After the first few shots, Sehun leaned in towards Tao, wrapping her arm all the way around Tao’s waist familiarly and pressing her mouth to her ear. “I want what everyone’s on,” she whispered. Tao, looking around, was aware of plenty of eyes on them as Sehun pressed an extra kiss behind her ear, but then decided that she wouldn’t get Sehun like this possibly ever again, so it was now or never. She kissed Sehun full-on, just for a moment. 

“I’ll find some for you,” she replied over the music, grabbing Sehun’s hand and leading her across the dance floor to the door to the side where she’d recognized a face. Just one face, but that was enough. 

“Junmyeon, right?” She knew she was pitching her voice a little higher than it was naturally, but she didn’t want to come off menacing. Junmyeon was _shorter_ than she was. Junmyeon didn’t seem to recognize her, so she explained that she knew Yixing, and that she recognized him from a deal or a party or something. They settled on a pool party. It had been a pool party somewhere. And yes, Tao could definitely remember this man without a shirt. 

“Can I get you anything?” Junmyeon had perfect pronunciation and every hair on his head was in place, his suit sharp. Tao felt that she and Sehun were underdressed in front of him. 

“Just what everyone else has. What do I owe you?”

“What they have? Have you had any water lately?” Junmyeon asked in a casual tone. But he was already reaching behind him and coming back with two baggies with small pink pills in them. Tao just shrugged, wrapping an arm around Sehun’s waist and letting it rest on her ass. She gave Junmyeon a hundred for each, thanked him, and then led Sehun onto the dance floor.

Sehun swallowed hers dry almost immediately, and Tao felt a pang of worry. She really _wasn’t_ sure when the last time Sehun had had a drink was. She’d had something at the cabin, right? Sehun had a desperate look in her eyes, like she wanted the music to swallow her up, like she wanted to fade into this world and fold the real one into infinite smallness. 

Tao pulled her closer, so that she didn’t have to see her face, and let the music carry their bodies until they were both sweating and the pills had taken effect. Everything was bouncier, and awesomer, and brighter. A stray lazer was a shot in the heart that had her digging her nails into Sehun’s skin and Sehun was biting her more and more between dancing. Sehun’s shorts were rough against her crotch, and Sehun’s hair was silky against her cheek, it was a million finite beads cascading around her. Her smile had gotten wider, at least. Fuzzily, but like crystals, Tao was pretty sure of that. 

Boys approached them from all directions, and Tao let them grind as much as they could before Sehun got mad and clutched her ass closer, pressing their sweating, hot bodies together on the dance floor and making a face at the undulating hormones surrounding them. Tao was thankful they were far removed enough from their own world that they didn’t recognize a single soul. 

Sehun’s stiffness melted away, like if you put cheesecake on top of hot coals, Tao thought, and for a moment she entertained the idea of biting down on Sehun’s finger to see if it tasted like cheesecake. Instead, she registered Sehun saying something in her ear. “Bathroom. Hur.” Tao’s brain took a second to register that Sehun had meant _Hurl._  

It took them a minute or two to stumble off the dance floor, and the moment they broke free from the fortifying crush of bodies the two stumbled and nearly collapsed, sustained only by Tao’s shaking legs. There was a line of two girls for the bathroom, during which time it was the labor of climbing a mountain to stay standing and sentient and keep Sehun in the same state.

They made it inside the bathroom and to the sink and then Sehun’s body heaved, a thin clear line of saliva dripping from her mouth into the sink. She wiped it slowly and collapsed against the sink, blinking twice. “Not so bad,” she said softly. It was quieter out of the direct line of fire of the speakers, and Tao realized Sehun’s voice was scratchy and deeper than normal. 

Then Sehun’s body went limp, and Tao had to lunge to catch her and keep her from hitting her head on the sink next to her, swearing under her breath and staggering under the weight. She dragged Sehun to the end of the bathroom, which in all truthfulness was not the nicest, and, hands shaking, dug in her bra for her phone. 

[ _Speed dial 1_ ]

“ _Hello?”_

_“_ Yixing?”

“ _Tao? Where are you? You usually tell me when you’re planning on skipping and—“_

_“_ I'm at Cloud Nine, and Sehun is passed out in my lap in the bathroom, and we took something.” Was she chewing bubble gum? It felt like there were a million pounds of bubble gum in her mouth, but it didn’t feel bad. Instead, she just puffed her cheeks out at the sensation.

“ _I—Shit, Tao, is that Junmyeon’s place? Okay, hang tight, I’ll be right there. I’m on my way, okay? I’ll be right there.”_ The phone line cut off and Tao shoved the phone back in her bra, bringing Sehun closer to her. She reached up to the sink and ran the water as cold as it went, pressing a cool hand to Sehun’s forehead. The water felt extra cold and slippery against her hand, like melted pearls.

They’d eaten pop tarts for dinner. Bad move number one. They hadn’t had a drop of water all day, except the glass Tao had while Sehun was asleep earlier. She hadn’t even asked Junmyeon what she was getting, so it was probably the good fortune that Junmyeon was Yixing’s friend and wasn’t out to kill them that they were okay right now. 

Too much thinking; her mind rebelled. She closed her eyes and pulled Sehun and her sweaty silky skin closer and waited. Yixing’s touch was gentle on her cheek, rousing her, and he took a drowsy Sehun from her arms, his biceps jumping as he gathered her legs together and stepped back to give Tao space to stand up. He’d come in his Land Rover and took them all the way into the city, judging by the exponential increase in light that filtered into Tao’s eyes.

She wasn’t really at the point where she could hold a solid conversation with him, but she begged him not to take them home. He responded with something soothing—his voice was so soothing. Like water running along a brook. He was handing her a water bottle from the front, and then another one, and gesturing to Sehun. She helped Sehun drink. 

The car rolled up in an unfamiliar driveway, and there was a shuffling, and the car door opened and there was a gush of cool night air on Tao’s face. She lifted the hair stuck to the back of her neck and it felt sinful. The warm body next to her was gently lifted away, and she protested a little, but not much, and then they were on their way again, off to Yixing’s penthouse in town that he rented for himself that she was familiar enough with. There he helped her up, continuing his steady stream of comforting nothing-speech in the elevator, settling his leather jacket around her shoulders as they came into his air-conditioned apartment. 

His bed was certainly a cloud, she concluded, after he’d gotten some gatorade into her. She fell asleep giggling, because cloud the cloud was silky and felt like it was licking her skin.

* * *

Luhan stared at the gaping garage door, clenching and unclenching his jaw. It was totally unlike his sister to run off like this, without telling him where she was going or why, but he could guess well enough, and Jongin had glimpsed that girl Tao on the other side of the door when Sehun disappeared. 

Still, her radio silence was disconcerting. It meant she was more exasperated and bottled up than she normally was. The scandal had happened at a bad time: she’d been having rough nights lately—they both had—and her various friend and academic groups all seemed to demand something of her. Sometimes when they were hanging out in their den he’d watch her phone screen light up and fall dark just to light up again with a text or email from someone else. Her body would shake with the sigh. Maybe some time off wouldn’t be so bad for her.

Their father was unflappable at breakfast. Their mother was a nervous, tense wreck, her mouth pinched tightly together, hands wringing years from her body, but their father just read the newspaper (with his face on the front page) as calmly as ever, drank his coffee, and kissed her on the cheek like everything was normal. They’d had a fight earlier that morning, when they thought both teenagers were asleep.

It made sense, in a cold kind of way. To pretend nothing was wrong, to turn their noses up all of them and stare down the country and dare them to accuse a perfectly respectable family of murder. But it was easier said and done by their father on the plane to to the capital and in his cubicle than it was for the twins in school, bearing the brunt of suspicious looks and downright gossip. There weren’t as many tabloids at the school today simply because no one expected the Ohs to even show up. 

_She’ll call_ , Luhan thought, sighing and closing the garage door. And he’d give Tao a firm talking to. A _firm_ talking to. And he’d make it clear to Sehun that he didn’t approve of her. He hung around the door a little while longer, gathering himself to face everyone again, because _someone_ had to do it. Sehun might be the queen of façades, but he was the king. 

He strode back to the better-lighted area of the Tunnel, running a finger along the love letters in the wall, an easy half-smile on his face as his eyes found Minseok curled up in his chair, scrambling to finish some homework for the next period. He meandered towards her quietly, so that she jumped when he breathed into her ear, saying, “I remember when I still cared about homework.”

Her scowl was the least threatening thing he’d ever seen, her lips pursing adorably, and Luhan had to fight every fiber in his body telling him to give her a soft little peck right then and there. It wouldn’t have looked right. “Distracting me,” she mumbled, blinking quickly. He chuckled but detached himself from her, deciding not to kick her out of his chair despite the surprised looks from the other kids in the Tunnel. It was a busy time of day and most of the seats were taken; he kicked out another junior instead who’d been let in on the basis of being particularly loaded and Kris’ new interest.

Distantly, he heard the bell ring, and there was a general rustling of paper and pants and as people rose from their seats. Minseok scribbled one last thing, her tongue poking out of her mouth, then she shoved her folder into her backpack. Polite as she was, she was towards the back of the crowd leaving the Tunnel. Luhan rose from his seat and placed his hand at the small of her back, throwing off a mental _fuck it_ to the people he knew were judging him. He needed _someone_ he could stand to get through the day.

He left his hand there as they walked through the crowded halls, and it was actually a little funny to him the wide berth people gave them, and the wide eyes. What he liked best was the redness at the tips of Minseok’s ears, which he could see today because she had her hair in a messy bun on top of her head. But she didn’t protest, and in fact she seemed to walk with a slightly slanted path like she was trying to bump into him, or press closer to him, like he was her protection from everyone else. He liked that.

To get to Minseok’s class they had to go through the wider space of the lobby. One of the walls was made entirely of glass and looked out on the front drive of the school and it was an atrium that rose through the full space of the school’s four floors. When there were students in it, it became a cacophonous meeting-place for echoes, whispers, and shouts. 

“Excuse me.” Luhan kept his voice level as he directed it at the boy in front off him, who looked nervous but determined, his arms crossed firmly in front of his chest and his eyes darting from Minseok to Luhan to Minseok. 

“No, excuse _me._ Could you get your hands off Minseok, please? She’s not your girlfriend, or anything.”

“Jongdae?” Minseok asked, taking a tentative step forward before stopping when Luhan squeezed her side, keeping her tucked next to him. 

“I don’t see how it’s any of your business, kid,” Luhan replied evenly, cursing the stupid boy with every fiber of his being. Students were beginning to notice Luhan’s lack of progress through the lobby and were stopping to figure out what was going on. 

“Look, I don’t want any trouble or anything, but I really, look, she just transferred here—“

“And?” Luhan raised an eyebrow, taking a step forward so Minseok was firmly behind him. She was totally tense and seemed confused, and he was more than willing to handle this for her. “Minseok can make her own decisions. Don’t talk to me if you have beef with her or her decisions. Unless you have beef with _me.”_ Luhan tilted his head clenching and unclenching his fist, loosening his arms. 

“I—well, since you asked,” said Jongdae, his face flushing in anger, “I think you’re a little entitled and it’s going to hurt someone someday. I mean, who knows what you’ve been taught by… your parents. But look, I’m not really a violent person.”

“That’s a shame,” Luhan cut in, pressing his lips together in a bitter smile, clenching his fist one more time. “I am, on occasion.” And without warning, he brought his fist up to slam into Jotgdae’s cheek where it would be sure to leave a mark. There was an audible gasp from behind him but he was too busy paying attention to the fist coming down from above at him and blocking it with a forearm, ramming his other fist into Jongdae’s stomach to knock the wind out of him and drive him back. 

Jongdae recovered surprisingly quickly, one of his fists connecting with Luhan’s side and another with his stomach. Luhan scrambled for a moment to get a good grip on one of his arms, twisting it behind his back to the point where he was worried he might break it, pushing until Jongdae keened below him, stopping his struggle. They stood there for a moment, panting, before Luhan raised his eyes to the circle of wide eyes around them, and the multiple phones that were surely filming the altercation. _Good—_ the more eyes the better, it meant he would only have to do this once to get his message across. His eyes sought out Minseok, who was standing towards the front of the circle, her hands clenched tightly at her sides, her eyes wide, swallowing quickly. She didn’t look too upset. Must mean he did well.

“If you’re going to insult my family or my… _close friends_ ,” he snarled, pressing harder on Jongdae so the boy whimpered a little, “please have the common decency to do it behind my back where I don’t have to deal with you.” With one last shove he let the boy go and stalked out of the circle, figuring Minseok would probably be better off without him attracting attention on her way to class. She’d come to him after school. She’d rather him than the other kids she’d met.

He had to hope that much.

The rest of the day was spent trying to act like he wasn’t tense as fuck, itching to find Minseok or Sehun or _someone_ and get out of the dreaded school and go to the Tunnel or the soccer field or even _home,_ for god’s sake. No one could see him sweat. He could hit on the usual suspects, he could smirk like he always did, and he could be as frustrating as ever to his teachers. He _could._ He left her alone the rest of the day.

That afternoon, he was restless. No soccer practice, and Jongin was busy, and so were the usual suspects. Their parents were all on Wall Street, and there was some event or other going on that they all needed to attend. Senator’s kids, impressively, weren’t invited, although Luhan wasn’t sure how welcome he’d be anyway. 

So he went to Manhattan, and dialed a number deep in his contact list titled [ _Always horny: Tessa_ ]. She was petite, and her bones were so tiny he always felt like he’d break her when he was with her, but her kissing was no joke. She went to school across town, so he didn’t see her often. She pounced on him whenever he offered.

They met in a fairly public coffee shop, which was not the smartest move. She got cream all over her upper lip and he quickly found himself sucking it off. It tasted bitter and he remembered he didn’t even like coffee. It didn’t matter; she was in his lap soon enough, and they were tucked against a window in a booth, so they had plenty of space. Her voice was husky, but it grated at him a little. He’d rather her lips.

“Missed you,” she kept saying, and he wanted to tell her, _you don’t even know me, just kiss me dammit._ He kissed her instead. He was almost lost in it, in the intricacies involved in the art of kissing when a figure happened to pass outside the window with a jacket he recognized, a deep maroon that he looked for sometimes in the morning. 

Tessa entertained herself with his neck as he and Minseok locked eyes, but it was only for a moment, because like a real pro, she was swept away by her friends, and Luhan was questioning whether he’d seen her at all. Well, there went his inhibitions, and now Tessa could feel him getting hard beneath her. In his ear, she was inviting him back to her place by taxi. He accepted.

That night, he woke with a start, barely sparing a glance at the clock as he tipped out of bed, his body guiding him before his mind down the silent halls of his house. He knew the short route from his room to Sehun’s by heart; he could walk it half asleep, all the way asleep or probably dead. Her door used to squeak when he opened it at night but they’d figured that out a year or two ago and now it opened soundlessly. 

Only when he got all the way to her bed, where she was usually sleeping, did he realize that she was still gone, and he’d had no word. Her bed sat perfectly made like the maids did it while they were at school, the white comforter looking as impenetrable as marble and giving off no warmth. 

He fell onto it anyway, and it wasn’t marble, it was soft and downy and it swallowed it up like it usually did, like his own bed did. And it smelled like family. That was enough to soothe him back to sleep.  

The next day was a repetition of the last, except the heat hadn’t backed off on the Senator, who’d stayed in the capital, and Sehun was conspicuously absent. Luann’s mother didn’t seem to notice much; plenty of nights had gone by when one twin or both hadn’t come home. They’d always watched out for each other. He avoided Minseok, hoping she’d look favorably on him when they finally did speak. When there was only one period left of school the next day and most of the seniors were getting out early, Luhan took out his phone, tapping his text conversation with Minseok.

[ _You coming to the tunnel after school babe?_ ]

The reply was almost immediate, and Luhan wondered if she’d been waiting for him to text all day.

[ _Ok_ ]

[ _I’ll reserve it. Just us ;)_ ]

There was no response, but Luhan just shrugged. Minseok wasn’t one for getting into trouble; her teacher had probably glanced her way and she’d thrown her phone across the room. The thought made him smile as he brought a lighter to his joint. He’d already cleared a few days of leave from soccer practice with his coach on account of family problems. It might have been a mistake, but he could always work out at home if he got antsy. He didn’t feel like dealing with team drama, not when Sehun was still missing and her absence pressed against him insistently.

* * *

Minseok gave herself a pep talk before she knocked on the door to the Tunnel. _He’s a fuckboy. You knew that when he first looked at you; when he first talked to you; when he first texted you. You’ve known him for how long? You’ll get over this._ _You don’t need this. These people are cold and they’re out for themselves and—_ Maybe it was better to just knock. 

The door opened almost immediately, like Luhan had been sitting on the bannister of the stairs waiting for her to knock. When he pulled her in, she saw that he had, in fact, kicked every last soul out of the Tunnel, which must have been hard considering some seniors parked their cars there and surely wanted to get in just to _leave_. Well, better to keep this spectacle between them. If it was to be a spectacle. Hopefully he’d just brush her away with a smirk and a cold shoulder.

“How was your day, sweet one?” he asked, following her down the stairs. She was hyperaware of his heat and the solidness of his presence behind her, paranoid and sure that his gaze was raking her from behind appreciatively. She bit her lip. Swallowed again.

“It was fine. Better. Got the homework in fine, and everything. It was fine.”

“Hon, that was way too many fines in one breath. What’s wrong? I’m sure I can kiss it away.” Luhan’s voice dropped as he turned her around, his hands settling in that possessive, familiar way on her hips, drawing her towards him. His smell hit her like a debilitating wave along with the traces of weed. “I’ve been told I’m a good kisser, you know.”

_I’m the one who told you that_ , she wanted to say. Instead she swallowed, and took a purposeful step back. He flinched, in a big way, at her movement, startling her. She’d expected him to be reluctant, maybe, or just squeeze her hips like he’d done when Jongdae had been standing there in front of them. But there was fear somewhere in his eyes, behind the façade of his expression. She closed her eyes to block it out.

“I know you probably mean well. Well, you don’t, you’re up to no good in that sexy way or whatever, but still. I just… they say timing is everything, Luhan.” 

Luhan clenched his jaw. “You sound distinctly like you’re dumping someone. And also like you’ve done it before. Take it from another experienced dumper.”

“Well, I—“

“You can’t dump me if we’re not dating, not really.” Luhan smiled sadly.

Minseok stared incredulously, tempted for a moment to call him crazy—call him out. Some benevolent corner of her heart held her back, and instead she stuck to her script.  “Look, what you did yesterday, it wasn’t okay, Luhan. I don’t want to be involved in fights on any level at all. You were right when you said that stuff about me making my own decisions, but just because I freeze up when _Jongdae_ of all people decides to stand up to you doesn’t mean you go socking him in the face!”

Luhan’s mouth was pursed. “And what would you have had me do,” he asked quietly. “Stood there and let him slander me and my family? I’m not really known to be a pussy, Minseok.”

“Well, I just think… I mean in general… I don’t know if it’s my place, and it’s confusing, and I’m not sure what’s my business and what’s not… it would be really great if you could respect that I just don’t want to come to the tunnel anymore.” Minseok’s voice got higher and higher, like she was expecting a slap to rain down on her as she completed her sentence.

There was a spark in Luhan’s eyes for a moment, and he looked like he wanted to punch _something_ , but then he just let out a frustrated sigh and ran his hands through his hair, pacing away from her and then back again.

“Come on, I’ve never tried to hide who I am! Never have I once pretended to be someone who I wasn’t! _Tell_ me I lied to you.”

“It’s not so much me I’m worried about. You made as much of a promise to yourself as you did me, and you’re just too much of a-a coward to entertain the idea that maybe you might want a relationship that lasts even a half year!” She watched as he opened his mouth to speak, then shut it, like he was re-assessing her. “Yeah, you didn’t think about that, did you? You’re going off to college next year. There was never any way we were really going to date. You picked the perfect girl, Luhan. And even then you couldn’t do it.”

“Look, it was never my intention to hurt you. If I want to hurt people, I make it clear. Minnie, I thought I made it clear that I don’t want to hurt you.” Luhan scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "It was honestly kind of nice having someone just to fucking be with so I didn’t feel so alone all the time in that—what did you call it—that sea of people—"

“Please, you’ve never been alone a day in your life. All that stuff you said on the roof, that was all bullshit!” The tears she felt on her cheeks felt shameful. 

“Alone? You think I’ve never been alone? Of course I—“

“You haven’t been alone since the day you were born. No—since before you left the goddamn womb.” Minseok had never sworn so much in her life. “Sehun sees your soul, Luhan, and if you’re too blind to see that, you probably don’t deserve her anyway.”

There was a stunned silence as Luhan stared at her, wide-eyed. Minseok made a disgusted sound and whirled, turning to go. A hand closed around her wrist and she tugged it viciously, tired of knowing he was staring at her like this, with tears still dried on her face, her makeup probably running. “Let me go!” It was half-plea, half-demand.

“ _Minseok._ ” 

He sounded so broken, and her name coming from his mouth sounded so much like the only thing he was capable of saying, that she stopped, and looked back at him. He looked like he was staring death in the face, his lips slightly chapped and his face devoid of color. “Don’t leave me. I—don’t go. Please. Look, I was wrong.”

Minseok scoffed. “It’s a little too late for that. Go cry to your sis—“

“She ran away, Minseok,” he said, and as he said it, she watched the last of the light leave his eyes. But at least it got her attention. She turned back towards him, and with that assurance that she wouldn’t bolt out of the room, he dropped her wrist reluctantly, like his hand no longer had the strength to hold it. “Her and that girl… that girl Tao… they decided they had enough of me, of the school, of everyone, and they just… they disappeared. Sehun won’t return any of my calls. I even tracked her phone and she must have turned it off. I promised her I wouldn’t meddle in her love life, but I don’t think… I’m just…” _worried_. Minseok could see it chiseled into the lines of his face, the way she’d seen it before in reference to Sehun, only now it was amplified. 

Tentatively, she reached out a hesitant hand, touching his forearm, realizing he was physically shaking. “So you see,” he said wryly, his hands twitching at his sides at her touch, “I happen to be very much alone, for the first time in my life.”

* * *

Luhan couldn’t stop staring at her. His eyes stung from not blinking enough and there was a steady ache that started at the base of his skull and radiated to his eyeballs, so it felt vulgar to keep them open, but he couldn’t stop staring at her, Minseok’s words running through his mind like the prayers of a saint. 

_She sees your soul, Luhan._

Jesus, they were only in high school. Souls were supposed to be locked away for college at least. Souls were some far-off thing occasionally mentioned when their dad took them to church or a book in school spiraled into the metaphysical. At the same time, he wondered if he was seeing a bit of hers as the morning sun streamed through the feeble white curtains and he saw her mouth move in preparation for breath in his mind just a moment before it really did.

There was a thump from across the house, the first signs of his father stirring. The Senator was home for a few nights after a stressful week of damage control in the capital, but it was paying off; things were slowly moving on and people were, too, about the scandal since nothing had actually been proved and there hadn’t been any sensational video to loop. 

He and Sehun were usually awake before both their parents. They got to the Tunnel early compared to most seniors and often napped there with their friends, or else did homework they hadn’t bothered to do the night before. Luhan stirred from his place propped against the headboard; his sides still hurt from the punches Jongdae had gotten in. At least they weren’t in the face, where it mattered. Still, the combination of the headache and the ribs gave him a battered feeling that he wasn’t used to. 

“Sehun.” His voice was scratchy but light and melded with the sunlight well. He laid a hand gently on her shoulder, pushing it slightly. Sehun was a light sleeper; she’d usually stir when he came to her room at night, and he was the same way. She took a little longer to rouse now because she’d been so asleep, but her face broke into such unshielded, candid relief when she saw him that he couldn’t help but smile back, worried as he was. 

She croaked. He jumped, grabbing a glass of water from the side table and bringing it to her lips as she sat herself up slowly, scooting closer to him. Lips shimmering, she tried speaking again. “G’morning.”

“Morning, sis.” 

A tear slipped from her eye, right from the middle, and Luhan tried to remember whether that meant she was happy or sad. She took a stuttering breath. “Missed you.” Her words were stripped bare as they could be. He hugged her, and finally the hand squeezing his heart lifted, and he felt safe with her in his arms. “You look like shit,” she mumbled into his shoulder. He laughed, trying not to let his shoulders shake too much lest he jostle her jaw. 

“Let’s both shower, then,” he replied quietly. “I’ll make some breakfast and get rid of the birth-giver and the seed-giver.”

“M’kay.”

He slid off the bed to give her some privacy, taking a lukewarm shower so Sehun could make hers as hot as she wanted but turning the pressure as high as it would go, like that could make his headache go away. Then he took three aspirin, gave his parents some bullshit excuse that left his head as soon as he said it, and got breakfast started. When she finally came downstairs, hair wet and in her fuzziest pajamas, there was fresh rice, leftover kimchi, and fried eggs waiting for her. He’d even made a bean sprout soup to go with it on the side. He watched in satisfaction as she ate every last morsel, waiting until there was nothing left and she didn’t ask for more to begin his line of questioning.

“So do I beat her up?”

Sehun looked up from her glass of water. “Absolutely _not_ ,” she said emphatically. “Oh Luhan, look me in the eyes and tell me you will do that girl no harm.”

“Mental or physical? You disappeared for two days with no contact, Sehun—that’s long enough for me to have called the cops, if I had happened to be an overly-strung-out suburban helicopter parent.”

“You’re not though, are you, you’re my brother. And I—look, I just _know_ you understand why I needed to get away, probably better than everybody else.”

“That’s a non-starter, sis. I didn’t know where you were.”

“You could have traced Tao’s phone!”

“Tao’s father works in fucking Silicone Valley! Her phone is encrypted beyond what even the people I know can do! You think I didn’t try?”

“Luhan, I don’t wanna fight.”

“Fine.” Luhan took a steadying breath and focused on the heat of the sun coming through the kitchen window brushing the little hairs on the back of his neck; on the coolness of the marble countertop beneath his palms. “Fine. I don’t wanna fight either. Let’s just… promise me it won’t happen again. If you value my sanity.”

“I promise. I’m sorry, it was stupid in a way I’m usually not stupid. I usually think my stupidity through.”

Luhan smiled. “Now if that isn’t the most you thing you’ve said all day.” Sehun smiled back at him. Like a mirror. “So what are we gonna do?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Their smiles grew wider, and he leaned in. 

* * *

The Ohs didn’t come to school that day, and everyone was nervous. Jongdae kept apologizing to Minseok but trying at the same time to figure out if they’d broken up or not. By his smugness he seemed to suspect that they had, but Minseok wanted to hold what she had close to her, because there hadn’t even been anything to break up at the time of the fight.

She still liked hanging out with him more than a lot of the other kids. Eventually he got tired of questioning her about Luhan and they settled back into their old conversations about comics and food and architecture. Jongdae got all giddy when he knew what she was about to say, his entire face smiling, and he’d lean toward her to stop her just so he could tell her what she thought. 

She went to his penthouse on Central Park with six other kids, and she was curled up on the end of a couch next to Hungji when the first text arrived. 

[ _angel, I miss you_ ]

\- [ _where were you today_ ]

[ _found my sister. drugged-up vacation + it’s all good. I miss your lips babe_ ]

She licked her lips. - [ _Yours are the ones that do all the work._ ]

Jongdae was telling a story about a prank he played on Chanyeol that had involved five pigs and a commercial shipment of shaving cream.

[ _If it seems like I’m chasing smtg, it’s because I am._ ]

She didn’t reply. She put her phone down on the couch next to her. It buzzed again. The first thing she saw was a picture, but it wasn’t of what she would have expected. It was taken with a sloping view up his stomach, and there was color peaking in his cheeks, and his hair was soft and messy and undone. [ _I wish you were here_ ], it said. She thought,  _he has pretty nipples._

She didn’t respond to that, either, but response or no, she received another picture, this time of the pretty dick the school was on about. She tried to inconspicuously angle her phone away from everyone else and found herself staring at it for longer than was probably necessary. Finally, she decided he at least deserved a reply.

[ _miss you too. come tomorrow :(_ ]

The response was immediate. [ _cumming now, hon_ ]

* * *

Friday was eerily normal. The Ohs were back and discreetly making sure that everyone was coming to their christening of the Tunnel party that night like had been planned. It was such a serious business that they were preoccupied with it most of the day, Tao, by last period, was beginning to get worried.

She stayed in the Tunnel most of the day in a chair that faced the door so she’d be able too see when Sehun came in, but the girl didn’t enter her brother’s kingdom all day. Tao sighed and ventured back to her car; she still had to get dressed for the party and there was a mandatory evacuation of all cars anyway to get ready for the event. She’d have to get dropped off tonight, this one time. The parking area was to be a dance floor. 

She almost missed it sitting on her dashboard, neatly folded. The script was messy, but that didn’t surprise Tao. There was the odd thing about Sehun that was totally, candidly haywire. So her handwriting wasn’t perfect. _Can’t wait to see you tonight._ _-S._

* * *

It was Rihanna, then Hyuna, then Kygo, then Minseok lost track. She was wearing a short black a-line skirt with a grey tank top, and she’d left her hair down to spill over her shoulders. The Tunnel was more full than she’d ever seen it, and she was glad she’d chosen to go through the dead school instead of the suggested entrance of the garage door, which had been left open for the event. It looked packed at that end of the place: only three cars were parked at the far end, separated by a curtain of sparkly beads so she couldn’t even tell whose cars they were. Probably important seniors, she reasoned, because the hosts weren’t even here yet.

The usual table where drugs and food was kept had been swapped for a long runner of tables spotted with kegs and other substances, as well as munchies laid out. Just outside the school side entrance Minseok had had to pass more than a few couples in various stages of making out and undress. 

It was altogether the most head-over-heels, full-throttle party that she’d ever been to. She found Soojung standing to the side with some friends and made her way over, rejecting a solo cup of beer offered to her with a gracious smile, aware her eyes were as big as saucers. Lights had been brought in to paint the ceiling of the Tunnel different colors and every surface of the normal furniture was covered with people. They radiated a heat that had nowhere to escape, and instead swirled in eddying patterns between bodies and voices.

She saw the girl Luhan said had run away with Sehun with presiding over a seat, eyes set in intense, smokey makeup, her hair glinting in gentle waves around her face. Skintight distressed jeans clung to her legs which were draped over the armchair like they owned it. Minseok sighed. Clearly Luhan hadn’t been too mad, then, if she was still alive and looking like _that._

Her phone buzzed in her bra. She took it out, smiled at it. It was from _Asshole._

[ _don’t you look delicious tonight_ ]

Her head whipped up and she was scanning the crowd, searching for the brunette, cursing herself for not seeing him first. 

They melted out of the crowd like a single beast, in simple jeans and white tops, a white t-shirt for Luhan and a silk blouse for Sehun. Sehun’s lips were stained a deep wine and her makeup was perfect, and Luhan’s hair was pushed back just like Minseok always wanted to do. 

They split at the beginning of the couches, moving towards their targets with a premeditated purpose. He was staring at her long before he came into earshot, and clearly he’d already checked her out, because now he was merely staring at her eyes. Minseok wondered if she should move. No; better not to trust herself with something as dangerous as that. 

A body blocked her view of him for a moment and she was paying such close attention to him that she heard what Kris muttered, and saw exactly where he gestured, to a table off to the side, where a senior was carefully setting powder in neat white lines. 

“Hey man, we’ve been waiting on you,” Kris said. “Come take a hit.”

Luhan said, “No dude.” But Kris didn’t get out of the way fast enough, confused and a little offended. Luann’s hand pushed gently on his chest, clearing Minseok’s line of sight to him. She could see he was still looking at her. 

“The fuck bro, just come hang out then! Is that kid really better than a hit?” Kris seemed incredulous, like the idea didn’t make any sense. Finally, Luhan turned his eyes to Kris, and the expression on his face alone told his friend just how ludicrous he thought the whole conversation. 

Kris was finally stalking back towards the couches, and suddenly Luhan was in front of her, and all she could do was look up before his arms were around her waist and he was tugging her towards him—and she barely had time to register what he was about to do before he was kissing her in front of everybody. 

She could have sworn the room got quieter, even though there was music pumping from every speaker and not that many people could possibly have a very good view of them, tucked along the side of the Tunnel, pressed against the worn edges of the love letters of high schoolers past. 

He pulled away before she could get too distracted by his lips, his pupils visibly dilating. “Missed you,” he muttered, radiating nonchalance concerning the eyes focused on them. Minseok swallowed.

“You said that already,” she replied.

“Yeah, well. I missed you,” he said again, his hand traveling from the small of her back to her ass to pull her even closer to him, like he could swallow her. Had she forgotten, in the space of—what—two days, one day?—the way he smelled? The way he tasted, and the sparks it fired in her veins when he looked at her like that, when his fingers clenched on her flesh like he was tying it to the ground? He’d said something and she’d missed it, eyes fluttering.

Coming back to the world, she was aware that everything had begun to continue as it had been before the Ohs had arrived. Maybe an ass grab was all they required to be satisfied as to Luhan’s nature. His other hand found hers and he was tugging her along the edge of the Tunnel, between people who were, for once, too drunk or having too much fun to care that he was Luhan to move for them.

She tried to ask him where they were going, tried to tell him that she didn’t really want to dance, not right now, not when he’d only just showed up—but he was just a little too far ahead of her, tugging her always further into the tunnel until they got to the very far side of the Tunnel, where it sloped upwards to meet the outside and the garage door was thrown wide to let in the cooling city night air. 

“Oh Luhan, we are _not_ going outside, it’s cold and I—“ but he tugged her to the side at the last moment, and they passed through a curtain of clinking beads, and then she was falling onto him, and he was tugging her even closer, and he wouldn’t let her talk because he was kissing her more hungrily than he ever had, with perhaps less grace, but that was hot, too. He groaned when she let his tongue fully into her mouth, sitting himself properly in the (huge) backseat of whatever car they were in and pulling her solidly onto his lap, pressing her as close as he could.

If she wasn’t so distracted, Minseok would’ve said he seemed desperate. Maybe he _had_ missed her. Acting on a split-second impulse, she pulled back just a little bit, teasingly, keeping their lips touching and her mouth tantalizingly open but making it harder for his tongue to get to her and for his lips to press so bruisingly onto hers. 

His growl in response got her swaying back towards him, tipping up so she could press her tongue down into his mouth, licking across his lips, reveling in his taste. His mouth opened even more, seemingly for her, but then his hand came up to tangle in her hair and pull her head back to give him leverage.

His other hand was already slipping up her tank top, sliding up her bare side and brushing her breasts. He didn’t seem to plan on leaving her lips anytime soon. She leaned back, nearly leaning onto the seat behind her to get away from his mouth as he chased her, finally gaining enough breath to pull her tank top off after a quick check out the window—they were far from any prying eyes, and she trusted that no one would even look back here.

He had her bra unclipped and off the second she leaned forward again, and now he spared a moment to leave her mouth and attach his to her nipple, sucking for a moment, his hands cupping her back and pressing her to him as she ran her hand through his hair. “I just…” he trailed off, mouthing a little less hungrily up her neck and licking down her jaw, massaging her hips.

Minseok rolled them forward, lost in the lithe pound of the music, realizing that her favorite pretty dick was swollen and hard beneath her, and that the breath whistled between Luhan’s teeth every time she rolled forward. She began grinding in a regular rhythm and soon he tipped his head back, his adam’s apple bobbing and his neck shining in the secondhand light.

She moved her hand between them, shoving his shirt up to brush the pads of her thumbs over his nipples, drawing him towards her with her hands and her mouth. Then she let it fall, down his abs to unbutton his pants and palm him through his pants, mouth parting at the low groan that vibrated from his throat. 

His hand in return slipped between her shorts and her underwear and she replied by pushing her hand past his underwear to wrap around his dick, drawing a hiss from his lips. He drew them away from her mouth and his breath ghosted across her cheekbone for a moment before coming to hover over her ear in the midst of the movement. 

“All I can think about right now,” he groaned, “is sitting you down on me properly, right here, right now. The fuck are you doing to me, baby?”

Minseok whined, twisting her wrist and dragging her hand slowly upwards. Another hiss of breath in her ear. “ _Shit_ , you want it, Minnie. You’re fucking sinful.” His hands were down her shorts and under her panties grabbing her ass tightly to him. Minseok gave up and put both hands through his hair, letting him guide her hips and press teeth-edged tongue to her collarbone, dropping her mouth to his ear as she pressed his length against her stomach. 

“Just fuck me, for god’s sake,” she hissed, echoing her words on the sunset roof, giddily hoping he might actually do as she asked.

His hands didn’t move from her ass but his mouth detached from her skin and he leaned back into the leather seat, delicate lips glistening slightly, hair beautifully wrecked, eyes dark and high. “What do you say?” he asked, after his mouth hesitated for a moment. Like it was smirking of its own accord.

Minseok wiggled out of her shorts and straddled him again, aware vaguely of her heartbeat and the pound of the music confined in the arched tunnel; leaned forward and he didn’t respond, just waited for her response. She ground her hips once and watched as his jaw clenched. “ _Please._ ”

“ _Mmm_.” He sounded amazed at his own satisfaction. Luhan’s tongue rolled around his mouth and then his fingers were pressing into her and she gasped, her hands tightening in his hair. This _was_ a start: this was a beginning, the first strokes of something that could be a masterpiece, for just a year. A body to be next to her, with her, _in_ her when she needed, to talk to her, to know her, to care about the Minseok shifting under the surface and claim it as his to take care of.

She was soaking already and he was impatient and hard, so before long he held her hips steady and let her sink as she liked, watching with a slackened mouth as she moaned, sucking him in. He knew it wasn’t her first time, but she was reveling in it like she’d never had anyone in her before. 

When she was fully sitting on him, he moved a little and she clutched his back and started to bounce and it was all he could do to keep up, and support her back, and keep from coming in the first three minutes like he was fourteen years old. 

* * *

“Hey,” Sehun said, trying to speak loud enough that Tao could hear her over the music. But Tao just put a hand up to her as if to shush her, and then actually shushed her.

“Shh! A beautiful thing is happening.”

Sehun followed Tao’s line of sight. There was her brother, denying the offer to do a line with Kris in favor of—yep, there he went, full tongue and everything and—there, yep, there was the ass grab. Sehun sighed. At least the girl seemed nice. At least she didn’t seem like a slut or a gold digger or a liar.

“My brother is a beautiful thing?”

“I’ve seen the light. He takes good care of you and I appreciate it.”

“You hate my brother.” Sehun said flatly, perching on the armrest of Tao’s chair. She was trying not to look at the other girl’s face because her makeup and the way the light hit her face made her intimidatingly sexy. 

“I do not.”

“Do too.”

“You probably thought I hated you for three years.” Tao raised an eyebrow; Sehun had little to say to this.

“I didn’t even pay you that much attention.” Tao’s eyebrow went higher and Sehun blushed. “You’re a very sullen person to look at! How am I supposed to know you’re a squish? Why do I always date the squishes? It’s ridiculously specific. I date the squishes who like _dogs_.”

“So we’re dating?” Tao straightened a little bit, her face blank and unforgiving. “This is news. Thanks for notifying me.”

“Wha—no, I mean—“ _fuck._ Sehun looked down the tunnel at the cream of the crop of cool kids, all getting down and mostly high. “I mean, if you want. I don’t know if I want to tell them, or whatever, just yet. It’s—me and this place have a complicated relationship. I’m much more fun outside it.”

“I thought you weren’t going to talk to me after the other night,” Tao drawled, inspecting her nails. “I’m also flattered that Luhan decided _not_ to beat the shit out of me, although I have a feeling, now, that you might have had something to do with that. But look, if you’re looking for someone who knows, like, how to cook shit, and, I don’t know…”

“Drive?” Sehun smirked despite herself; Tao chuckled.

“I just don’t see how you trust me.”

“Luhan can cook shit for me, I don’t need _that_. Actually,” Sehun said, her voice dropping as she leaned down to settle her mouth next to Tao’s ear, her silky blonde hair tickling Tao’s nose, “I’m _looking_ for someone who knows how to eat me out.” And then she sat up like she hadn’t really said much out of the ordinary and continued to watch the party, pressing her lips together and trying not to blush too much.

She felt Tao straighten beside her; felt the air change. “You’re a fucking tease,” she muttered under her breath, the words svelte and impressed. Sehun shrugged and rose from the armchair, weaving through the crowd and hoping Tao was following.

Tao was following.

There were only a few cars parked behind a thick curtain of beads in the back corner of the Tunnel where the dancing lessened and the smoking increased where Sehun led her. She stopped to converse with a couple kids hanging out outside the curtains for a moment—who looked suspiciously like guards—before moving forward through them after a glance back at Tao.

Tao followed.

They took the first car, a BMW similar to Tao’s, just newer, with blacked-out windows just like the SUV parked behind it. Tao thought she could hear moans coming from that one and it looked like it was moving a little.

She looked at Sehun, her eyes a question. “My brother moves a little faster than me, what can I say,” explained Sehun, her eyes dancing as she leaned against their car.

Tao shook her head, approaching Sehun like she was being drawn against her will. “You’re crazy,” she murmured. “You, but me too, so.” She slid her hands around Sehun’s waist and pressed their lips together, unable to help an amused smile when Sehun kissed back with fervor. She pulled back before they could get too carried away, licking her lips in satisfaction at Sehun’s messy hair and swollen lips.

“In,” she said, gesturing to the car. Sehun grinned and opened the door behind her, falling into the relative darkness, her legs falling open in invitation.

* * *

The roar of the engines surprised everyone. The lights even more, after a night of only the dimness of the multicolored spotlights angled towards the ceiling. The tunnel was still pretty full and everyone expected the Ohs to reappear somewhere or other and do something ridiculous.

“We have other parties to do that, though,” Sehun had said, that morning over breakfast. Luhan had nodded in agreement.

“It’ll build anticipation, actually,” he’d replied. “The end-of-year tunnel party is always the craziest one anyway.”

So the Ohs didn’t reappear. Two cars drove out of the Tunnel in an extravagant shower of beads, and everyone tittered about it, but then the music was turned up and someone suggested beer pong and everyone forgot about it.

Later that year, two new letters appeared in the crack, and everyone wondered who’d written them, because you had to get permission from Luhan first, but he wouldn’t tell anyone, and no one could get his new girlfriend to spill, either. Once a letter wenet in the crack, it didn't come out again. No one even tried to break his sister. She ruled the school as coldly and gleefully as ever, although she spent less time in the public eye after school as she had before. 

* * *

seahorse's note: happy birthday abbie! I hope everyone enjoys this long-ass fic that turned into being more about sibling love than I intended.


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